TE23 Double Feature

The Forests (novel excerpt) Sandrine Collette T ranslated from French by Alison Anderson In the middle of a day Corentin would record as August 11, they entered the territory of the Forests. And in all likelihood, he would not have recognized them had he not remembered the shape of the roads and the curves of each bend, had he not been looking out for the illegible signposts and the farms he’d gone past a thousand times, had he not felt his body quiver with a new sense of proximity. Because there were no more Forests. And even though he’d expected this, it was a shock. He’d hoped for something else. He’d believed the Forests would be stronger, that there would be a magnificent surprise in store for him, that there was truly something magical about them. And now all that was nothing but legends. Their trees were like all the trees he had seen since leaving the Big City: bare, 65

[Listen to Sandrine Collette discuss her novel, The Forests , on the April 10, 2022 episode of French Forays on Trafika Europe Radio, right here .]

Sandrine Collette