Enemy Force

( French - Force ennemie - 1903 )

novel by John-Antoine Nau

translated by Michael Shreve

Published: Black Coat Press - trade paperback - 2010 ( French Science Fiction no.38 )
ISBN: 1935558498 / 9781935558491

Black Coat Press ( Barnes & Noble ) - Nook - 2011
BN ID: 2940013876125

Black Coat Press ( Amazon ) - Kindle - 2011
ASIN: B006KNNTJK


synopsis
Surrealistic novel about a poet who is locked in a lunatic asylum and who mysteriously becomes possessed by an "Enemy Force," possibly an alien being from a hellish planet orbiting the star Aldebaran.
Phillipe Veuly, accursed poet, wakes up in a rubber room. Where is he? An insane asylum. Why? He doesn’t know and the doctors refuse to tell him. Is he crazy? Or rather are the ‘psychiatrists’ the ones who should be in his place? Stricken with amnesia, he learns from a guard that he was committed by his cousin to separate him from his alcoholic tendencies. In reality, he is the victim of the imaginary jealousy of this relative. Soon he thinks he is inhabited by a being from another planet: Kmôhoûn, the ‘enemy force’, (among others), a disembodied spirit who fled the insupportable conditions of his home planet, Tkoukra. It’s not easy living with this naughty tenant who doesn’t hesitate to act insanely, speak extravagantly and even vulgarly, or even scream inside your head when others talk to you. And the “semi-lucid mental patient” falls passionately, madly, desperately in love with a female inmate, Irene. She leaves, disappears; he flees after her. He runs to the ends of the earth to find her. Enemy Force tells the story of the troublesome cohabitation of these two beings in the same body, and Veuly’s desire to concretize his love for Irene while protecting her from Kmôhoûn.


awards
Le prix Goncourt ( 1903 )


http://intranslation.brooklynrail.org/french/enemy-force-novel-and-the-emerald-eyes-short-fiction-by-john-antoine-nau