Alone and distraught, the narrator of Langue morte is roaming around the streets of his childhood. He wanders through time as well, bringing his neighbors, parents and brother back to life, as well as all the odd characters he runs into. Introduced to the theatre by his father, to foolishness by school and to death by his grandmother, he will be forced to flee to escape his own demons… From that bleakness to Austria, via Paris, southern France, Germany and Italy, the narrator will be confronted with his own idleness, suffering and anger, but will also find love, music and friendship. Those obsessive memories from his youth will lead him through the night to the dawn of a new era.

Langue morte is neither a sequel to Carnaval, nor a prequel to K.O. Langue morte describes the birth of a world. A disenchanted world with neither ideals nor gods, where relationships between humans are either economic or conflictual. The book has no black-and-white good and bad, and it’s not nostalgic, either. It’s just a boy’s life tipping from one era into another. The whole is well served by a poetic and powerful writing style.

Standing in front of the apartment building where he grew up, a man remembers. End of an era, emergence of a new world. Langue morte is a fierce, funny and finely crafted novel.