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The Botanical Garden

Jean Frémon

Translated by Brian Evenson

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“Part Foucault, part I Ching, part narcissist marooned. It shows how shallow, how deep, how desperate, how alive the human mind can be.”
— Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 1, 2004

The intellectuals who work at the Jardin botanique in Paris strive to live in a world of science, art, and literature, but remain hilariously bound to their relationships, friendships, and feuds. Examining every part of their lives with the same wonderful curiosity, they reveal deep philosophical issues facing us all. As the narrator notes:

I liked the sort of chaos made from disorder and improvisation in which I lived. The idea of having several personalities on hand at once, truly many careers without a lot of connection to one another, somewhat attracted me, I saw it as a guarantee of tranquility, the assurance of being able at will to leave one part of yourself so as to take refuge in another, the comforting feeling of never truly resembling your portrait…. Why not, once past the age of fifty, treat oneself to this luxury?

Green Integer also published a sequel, Island of the Dead, which won the PEN-West Translation Award for its translator, Cole Swensen.