World Literature Today

Abstract:

Antoine Volodine (b. 1950) does not exist, not exactly. He is one of the authors and the self-titled spokesperson of postexoticism, a movement that comprises 49 authors to date, with a total production of 343 texts. What makes this a unique feat in contemporary French fiction is that all 49 authors are also heteronyms of a singular author: the same Antoine Volodine. Other writers before Volodine have explored heteronymic fiction, Fernando Pessoa among the most famous, but Volodine has most likely taken this literary experimentation to its limits. In postexoticism, heteronymy deploys itself as a complex literary montage, halfway between schizophrenia and artistic grandiose, and exists outside of traditional literary conventions, with its own codes and aesthetics. It is both everywhere and nowhere, and we, readers, are nothing more than occasional drifters there, our relation to its texts being, in the best of times, fraught with uncertainty. As such, postexoticism stands undoubtedly as one the most poignant and compelling literary movements of the age.