Pascal Bruckner launches his most recent novel in Bucharest

French writer Pascal Bruckner on Wednesday evening launched in Bucharest his most recent novel, "A Year And A Day." 

Organised by the TREI publishing house, the event took place at the Humanitas bookstore downtown, attracting a large audience. At the end, the author signed a number of books and answered questions from the audience. 

Alongside the famous writer, there were Mirela Nagat - cultural journalist, Nadine Vladescu - the translator of the book, and Magdalena Marculescu - publishing director of the Trei publishing house. 

"The time that never passes is the time of dreams, of the subconscious, of the desires. 'A Year And A Day" speaks of a watch, of the perception of time and a watchmaker whose goal is to repair the world and help God," explained the author, who told his readers that they will find in the book "a metaphor of the human condition, a nightmarish metaphor." 

The hero of the novel, Jezabel Thevenaz, wants to fulfill her father's last wish, from his death bed: to bring back the watch he made for a good friend in Montreal. It's a unique, complex watch, meant not to tell the time, as any watch does, but "it somehow tries to destroy time from the inside." 

While flying over Greenland, Jezabel's plane is caught in a terrible storm and lands on an anonymous airport in the northern part of the United States. Jezabel goes to Plazza, a dilapidated and labyrinthine hotel, where she rents a room for the night. 

"But, when she wakes up, the nightmare starts: when she goes to the reception desk she finds out that she didn't stay there for one day, but for a whole year, and she needs to pay an enormous amount of money, so that she starts to work at the hotel to pay for it. In other words, she somehow becomes a slave in a bizarre universe," according to the book's presentation. 

"This book is very challenging, for you, the reader, as you are somehow by the character's side, or you become as confused as the character in the novel is, and when you close the book the gates of the universe you entered because of the book remain open, still," showed the publishing editor Magdalena Marculescu. 

"This book seems to be written by a philosopher, but it's a fantastic book, a fantastic fabric of reality and romanticism," she said. 

Magdalena Marculescu also brought to mind that Pascal Bruckner has been collaborating with the TREI publishing house for more than 20 years. 

Thus, the TREI publishing house published all his novels so far: "The Dutiful Son," "The House of Angels," "Bitter Moon," "The Beauty Stealers," "Which of us two invented the other?," "The Paradox of Love," "Ogres Anonymous," "The Divine Child," "My Little Husband," "Watch Out, Santa Clause is Coming Back!" and "Outcasts," the dramaturgy volume "What Does the Lord Want?," as well as essays "Has Marriage For Love Failed, " "Perpetual Euphoria. On the Duty to Be Happy," "Misery of Prosperity," "The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism," "The Wisdom of Money" and "An Imaginary Racism." 

Born in Paris in 1948, Pascal Bruckner is a novelist and an essayist, an emblematic figure of the French intellectuality.