A VISIT FROM VOLTAIRE – DINAH LEE KÜNG
A VISIT FROM VOLTAIRE
A Comic Novel —
About the Unlikeliest of Friends
Dinah Lee Küng
Paperback, March 2004
£7.99, 360pp, 1 870015 84 3
Questions for Reading Groups
When an American mother-of-three finds herself overwhelmed in her new home
in
This talkative character wearing a wig and kneebreeches is the last straw.
Though she begs him to go home, he unpacks his mouldy trunk instead.
Slowly V. becomes her warmest friend as they laugh and quarrel, and he
teaches her the best lesson of all – how to live life to its fullest.
Born in
'A mix of the real and the surreal, a combination of fact and fiction and
a hint of the American experiencing Switzerland, written in a
straightforward and entertaining
style...'
Swiss News
'... a picaresque domestic romp... disastrously
funny...'
The Correspondent
'Beneath the surface of a light-hearted comedy, Dinah Lee Küng addresses
a wide range of serious questions - how much energy and passion is put
into any lasting literary work, how literary friendships are never free
from jealousy and what posterity and ideals really mean.
London Student
Recommended by Amazon Readers
Historical
Fun with Good Feedback / Old Europe Comes to Life
Funny
Books on Life with the French
Books
on France
American
Women Discovered in London
A VISIT FROM VOLTAIRE
Dinah Lee Küng
Hardback, April 2003
£16.99, 360pp, 1 870015 80 0
“
Mais
oui! L’art de vivre has escaped you! I
have come to teach you the fine art of being happy. There is nothing I
haven’t seen or done. Nothing can surprise me!
Reading
nurtures the soul, but an
enlightened friend brings its solace.
Editors! Reviewers! Insects that can only get themselves noticed by
stinging!
Voltaire
”
“I
overheard you downstairs just then, when you referred to me as
‘Nobody.’ You now stand corrected. You may apologize.”
No, her intruder is hardly a Nobody. In fact, when an ordinary American
reporter and mother of three, recently arrived in a small village in
Switzerland, finds herself with a loony claiming to be the Greatest Mind
of the Eighteenth Century, she pleads herself unworthy and begs him to go
home.
But he doesn’t, and over the next nine months her stubborn visitor will
become her warmest friend, unfailing mentor and most frustrating
intellectual foil. V. turns out to be a man of sparkling intelligence with
a boundless interest in politics, philosophy, drama, and good gossip.
He’s an excellent raconteur, boasting knowledge of every subject under
the sun, including his hostess’ new neighborhood outside
The two friends exchange tales of their respective pasts –
stories
of love, mystery, success, and failure, stories of heartbreak and courage,
reminiscences roaming from London to Potsdam, Hollywood to Hong Kong.
Determined to teach the author l’art de vivre, he puts her
experiences as a mother, a writer, a wife, and an immigrant into a new
perspective, both wise and humorous.
However, V. also has his downside. Ever-keen on science, he joyfully
embraces modern technology and before long he’s clogging her e-mail,
bankrupting her credit cards and making a new name for himself with a
web-site, L’Infâme.org –
in
short becoming the Houseguest from Hell.
This mismatched couple survive her first winter by talking, laughing and
quarrelling across the centuries, across differences in politics, religion
and sexual expectations. But by the end, it is the author’s turn to
sustain V. as he re-lives his own last days; shaken by what he discovers
but resourceful as ever, he remains witty to the end.
Dinah Lee Küng was born in
