Humor, pain and copious amounts of love run throughout this critically acclaimed novel by Tom Lanoye. Both brave and honest, Speechless is a poignant homage to Lanoye's late mother, Josée.
Flamboyant, proud and dominant, Josée is unrecognizable after suffering a stroke, which strips her of the ability to speak and express herself with the expansiveness for which she was known. With style and grace, Lanoye weaves together autobiography, testimony, and fiction to recount the last years of his mother's life and the years before her stroke.
Harnessing his power as a playwright and dexterity as a poet, Lanoye employs rich prose to paint a colorful picture of growing up and coming to terms with his homosexuality. Speechless is compellingly translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent, whose skillful translation complements Lanoye's rich style.
About the Author: TOM LANOYE is one of the most popular and well-regarded Flemish authors. Starting out as a poet and a critic, he became famous for his prose and drama, as well as his politically and socially engaged columns and his unique cabaret‐style performances. He is the author of over 50 works of poetry, drama and fiction. In 2017, Speechless was adapted into a film by Hilde Van Miegham. Lanoye has won many literary prizes, including the prestigious Constantijn Huygens Prize for his entire oeuvre. His work has been translated into fifteen languages.
PAUL VINCENT is a Dutch-to-English translator based in London. He studied at Cambridge and in Amsterdam, and after teaching Dutch at the University of London for over twenty years became a full-time translator in 1989. Since then he has published a wide variety of translated poetry, non-fiction, and fiction, including work by Achterberg, Claus, Couperus, Elsschot, Jellema, Mulisch, De Moor, and Van den Brink. He is a member of the Society of Dutch Literature in Leiden, and has won the Reid Prize for poetry translation, the Vondel Prize for Dutch-English translation, and (jointly) the Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize.
