More than a century after this collection of short news items appeared in a French newspaper, Joanna Neborsky’s contemporary illustrations accompany the text in a different kind of graphic novel.
Journalist Félix Fénéon anonymously wrote more than a thousand brief reports for Parisian paper Le Matin, a selection of which have been translated by Luc Sante and republished in Illustrated Three-Line Novels: Félix Fénéon. Bringing new life to the Frenchman’s historic accounts, Neborsky’s artwork elegantly draws on the past for inspiration.
A social critic and possible anarchist, Fénéon wrote condensed pieces about local current events in the years following fin-de-siècle France. His faits divers chronicled odd news, true crime, and unsettling deaths that exposed, critiqued, and reflected modern French society at the time. In 2007, Belgian-American writer Sante translated Fénéon’s contrite correspondence for the New York Review of Books, and soon after, Neborsky began the work of illustrating more than two dozen of the social summaries.
Visit Joanna Neborsky’s website, read more about her work, check out Luc Sante’s original translation of Félix Fénéon’s Novels in Three Lines
Click through below for a gallery of images from the book.
Comments (4)
[...] by inahill on October 18, 2010 via flavorwire.com [...]
The three line novels, which on the surface appeared clever, upon examination were wholly worthless to Christopher.
AGREED @christopher
Witty and sardonic; I loved it and will give this as a present to friend and foe alike!
J
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