Synopses & Reviews
As its title suggests, this collection is a sort of human list and found department. It is peopled with odd, vivid characters, often alone and displaced, immigrants from Turkey, Algeria, Egypt, Chile or lost souls in their own homeland, wanderers in whose world the miraculous is ever lurking, always possible. Many live in Paris a dilapidated, largely unseen Paris of sweatshops and dingy hotels. Some have left their countries, like the wily Miss Carmen, to see what could be had; others, like the clubfooted Sliman, are driven by spiritual desire. For all of them, the experience of exile, real or imagined, is a catalyst to liberationa liberation described by Marsella with compassion and a touch of the mystical.
Review
"A story collection showing immense mastery of character, dialect, and narrative...Distinguished indeed. May Marsella take on the novel." -Kirkus Reviews,
Review
"Earthy and spiritual, particular and universal, and often very sly and funny. The range and diversity Anne Marsella displays, stunning for a first collection, give convincing proof of a fresh talent emerging with full, and impressive, power."-The New York Times Book Review,
About the Author
Anne Marsella was born in Fresno, California. She earned a degree in French Literature at Mills College and spent two year on the south of France as a student and teacher. She later received a Maitrise de Lettres Modernes from the Universite of Paris VIII, Saint Denis. For the past five years she has been living in Paris where she writes and teaches English at the CETEC, Universite de Paris-Dauphine. Winner of the 1993 WISE Short Story Contest, Marsella has published several of her stories in the Paris transcontinental.
Table of Contents
Miss Carmen -- The roommates -- The lost and found -- Like father like son -- Testimony -- The blue ensemble -- My temple oh temple -- The builder -- The Mission San Martin -- Fatiha's bells.