Nov 1

Nov 1 Yves and Ada Rémy in Words Without Borders

“The Checkers Player” from Soldiers of the Sea by Yves and Ada Rémy

A game of checkers has life-and-death consequences in this short story by Ada Rémy and Yves Rémy.

I am proud Words Without Borders has chosen to feature my translation of Yves and Ada Rémy’s “The Checkers Player” in their November 2019 issue, The Otherworldly. The Rémy’s tale is taken from from their classic volume of interconnected stories, Les Soldats de la mer [The Soldiers of the Sea]. Something between an alternate history and a midsummer night’s fantasy, it was first published in 1968 by Julliard and has become a reader favorite and cult classic, multiply reprinted since by Seghers, Pocket, Fleuve Noir, and most recently, Dystopia Workshop, the publishing initiative of the librairies Scylla and Charybde, a pair of Parisian bookstores at the center of France’s contemporary speculative fiction scene.

Here’s an excerpt:

His friends withdraw. Arthur Shine-Levis pours himself a wee snifter of brandy; his doctor has forbidden him, but he vows not to have another. A knock at the door. A visitor? Is his manservant William not on call? Shine-Levis bids his guest enter.
It is a man wearing a black cape and a top hat. Thirty-odd years of age. The spitting image of the general’s portrait that adorns the foyer, the vision of a realist painter almost forty years ago. He sets the game of checkers down on a gueridon.
Arthur Shine-Levis feels his heart falter.

Husband and wife Yves and Ada Rémy are writers, filmmakers, and utterly charming people, who together have authored short stories, radio plays, and three other novels, one of which, La Maison du Cygne [The House of the Swan] won the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire at Utopiales in 1979.

Below, I’ve included a cover gallery of the various editions in chronological order.