Infinite Possibilities

Author: Sylvie Germain

Translator: Liz Nash   Cover illustration: Lise Weisgerber  

In her native France Germain's magical, sinister novels have been heaped with prizes including the prestigious Prix Femina. For some years she taught philosophy in Prague and this city provides the setting for her latest book. It tells the story of a university professor who, with his dissident friends, has been reduced to menial work by the Communist regime. Superficially realistic in style, the writing displays Germain's power of description and emotional intensity, as it follows the man's re integration into society.

Scotland on Sunday

As befits a book from a doctor of philosophy from the Sorbonne, post-existentialism merges with postmodernism. Everything is infinitely alterable and remarkably the same, melded together by an unusual rhapsodic style and finely rendered by Liz Nash's translation. Read it, and discover a rare author, a true translator and an innovative publisher.

Amanda Hopkinson in The Independent

Anything less likely than a spreading patch of damp on a toilet ceiling as the starting point for a novel of intense beauty and rare emotional insight would be hard to imagine. But this 'flower of passing time', as Prokop Poupa calls his unorthodox interior decor, is the inspiration for Sylvie Germain's Infinite Possibilities : a novel of kaleidoscopic richness and colour.

Mary Scott in The Literary Review