The Sextine Chapel

By the celebrated Oulipo writer, this brilliant and witty novel set in Lisbon explores love, relationships, and the strange balance between literature and life.

Journalist, writer, and translator Vincent Balmer moves to Lisbon to escape from a failing affair. During his first assignment there, he teams up with Antonio — a photographer who has just returned to the city after a ten-year absence — to report for a French newspaper on an infamous serial killer’s trial.

While walking around the city together to take notes and photos for the article, they visit the places of Antonio’s childhood, swap stories from their pasts, and confide in each other. But the more they learn about each other, the more their lives become inextricably intertwined.

With a structure that parallels Homer’s recounts their nine days together and the adventures that proliferate to form a constellation of successive ephemeral connections and relationships.

A middle-aged man (our hero) is traveling to the heart of the Scottish Highlands to be with his young mistress (our heroine), who is twenty years his junior. Some people would call this madness, a mistake, as his visit is not entirely welcome — her boyfriend will arrive in a few days’ time. But our hero will not be swayed from his mission to seduce and win over his love. This is after all a physical desire, one he could never fight. His current state presents all the expected symptoms of love: painful impatience, shortness of breath, constricted chest, complete loss of appetite. Their rendezvous has been arranged on a main road, where the A32 crosses the S70, beside a road sign. Despite suspecting an icy reception, our hero hopes for the best.

In , a comedy of mishaps and disappointments reveal, with great energy and a keen sense of derision, the oldest story in the world — one of amorous fantasy and its denial.

Any man — or woman — who wants to hear nothing — or no more — about love should put this book down.

Anna and Louise could be sisters, but they don’t know each other. They are both married with children, and for the most part, they are happy. On almost the same day, Anna, a psychiatrist, crosses paths with Yves, a writer, while Louise, a lawyer, meets Anna’s analyst, Thomas. Love at first sight is still possible for those into their forties and long-married. But when you have already mapped out a life path, a passionate affair can come at a high price. For our four characters, their lives are unexpectedly turned upside down by the deliciously inconvenient arrival of love. For Anna, meeting Yves has brought a flurry of excitement to her life and made her question her values, her reliable husband, and her responsibilities to her children. For Louise, a successful career woman in a stable and comfortable marriage, her routine is uprooted by the youthful passion she feels for Thomas. Thought-provoking, sophisticated, and, above all, amusing, captures the euphoria of desire through tender and unflinching portraits of husbands, wives, and lovers.