Synopses & Reviews
This is a book about yoga. Or at least, it was.
Emmanuel Carr re is a renowned writer. After decades of emotional upheaval, he has begun to live successfully--he is healthy; he works; he loves. He practices meditation, striving to observe the world without evaluating it. In this state of heightened awareness, he sets out for a ten-day silent retreat in the French heartland, leaving his phone, his books, and his daily life behind. But he's also gathering material for his next book, which he thinks will be a pleasant, useful introduction to yoga.
Four days later, there's a tap on the window: something has happened. Forced to leave the retreat early, he returns to a Paris in crisis. Life is derailed. His city is in turmoil. His work-in-progress falters. His marriage begins to unravel, as does his entanglement with another woman. He wavers between opposites— between self-destruction and self-control; sanity and madness; elation and despair. The story he has told about himself falls away. And still, he continues to live.
This is a book about one man's desire to get better, and to be better. It is laced with doubt, animated by the dangerous interplay between what is fiction and what is real. Loving, humorous, harrowing and profound, Yoga hurls us towards the outer edges of consciousness, where, finally, we can see things as they really are.
Review
"Vivid...an intimate chronicle punctuated by loss, desperation, and trauma...a probing memoir." — Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Carrère remains a fascinating character on the page, and his lithe confessional writing will resonate with longtime fans. The result is another marvelous creation from Carrère's boundless imagination." — Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
Review
"Fascinating...Funny...Carrère's work revolves around a practice of extreme — deranged, even — candor...I would gladly read a hundred pages of Carrère scrutinizing the 'huge caverns' of his nostrils, lingering on the way that air prickles and tingles against their walls." — Molly Young, The New York Times Book Review
About the Author
Emmanuel Carrère, born in Paris in 1957, is a novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and film producer. He is the award-winning, internationally renowned author of 97,196 Words, The Kingdom, Limonov, The Mustache, Class Trip, The Adversary (a New York Times Notable Book), My Life as a Russian Novel, and Lives Other Than My Own, which was awarded the Globe de Cristal for Best Novel in 2010. For Limonov, Carrère received the Prix Renaudot, the Prix des Prix, and the Europese Literatuurprijs.
John Lambert has translated Monsieur, Reticence, and Self-Portrait Abroad by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, as well as Emmanuel Carrère's Limonov, The Kingdom, and 97,196 Words. He lives in South Korea.