1. 2018 Viewbug Community Choice Award

             Mémoires

       d'un fils de nazis

 

“Je suis né en 1937. Mon père, duquel je me souviens si peu, à part cette image où je le vois me prenant dans ses bras et me soulevant très haut dans les airs, est mort dans un accident de voiture quelques mois avant la déclaration de la guerre. Petit, il paraît que je ne cessais de le réclamer lorsqu’il était au travail, ma mère, elle, en était très fière, car il comptait parmi les hautes autorités du Parti, faisant de nous une famille respectée ...”

 

La première partie de ces ‘Mémoires’ est le texte de l’auteur le plus largement diffusé dans le monde. Il a paru dans des revues littéraires en français (l’Autre Journal, le Bulletin de la Fondation Auschwitz, Les Cahiers du Sens, etc.), en anglais, toujours dans sa propre version, aussi bien aux Etats-Unis, qu’au Canada, en Grande Bretagne et en Inde , réédité à plusieurs reprises, ainsi qu’en traduction italienne, allemande , grecque, turque et polonaise. En août 2014, ce même texte a été pré-sélectionné, sous le titre de 'Venitian Thresholds', par l'American Gem and Filmmakers Literary Festival.

 

 

I-SRAELI SYNDROME

 

Published by l'Aleph in November 2013

 

2009 BOOK AWARDS www.indieexcellence.com

Multicultural Fiction Finalist

 

http://www.l-aleph.com/

formerly

Shalom Tower Syndrome was also a Finalist in the "Fiction & Literature"category at 

The National Best Books 2007 Awards.

It was also released in 2008 in Italian by Edizioni Fabio Croce

The novel is set in Israel. Alexis, who grew up in Rwanda-Burundi, is the son of an Italian Jew and a beautiful mulatto woman. As a young adult, he now queries the complexity of his roots: African-European and Judeo-Christian (his mother was raised a Catholic). The author guides the reader through a progression of exciting and complicated episodes involving Alexis. With his American wife he will vacation in Israel, and that stay will be a turning point in his life. The past catches up with him, exploding with the images of one man's life kaleidoscope: the memories of his African years, colliding with the more recent images of Milan, the smells, the colors and the primeval beauty of the black continent, mingling with those of Italy, as well as with the violent feelings Israel stirs in him. In that dense and haunting atmosphere he will meet young Israelis, a Palestinian and a German professor, the nephew of a Nazi soldier who died during WWII. Will Alexis finally reconcile himself with the conflicting parts of his identity? Will he feel more African or more European; more Catholic or more Jewish; or will his new environment help him find peace within himself, in spite of the country’s current dangers? The ‘mystery’ will unravel in the last chapter of this largely autobiographical novel. ‘There is a type of novel whose aim, as Jonathan Swift wrote of his intention behind Gulliver's Travels, is to “vex the world rather than divert it.” If it's a good and true novel then it will inevitably also serve both as a vexatious testament and a diverting read. Such is Albert Russo's I-sraeli Syndrome.

I-sraeli Syndrome is very much a biography of the soul, and as much as that of any latter-day Harry Haller, and Russo seems to have dredged in its pages the depths of his own being in order to have written it.’ 

                          David Alexander                              

.  

Excerpt from James Baldwin's letter to the author, penned the year of his death: “I like your work very much indeed. It has a very gentle surface and a savage under-tow. You're a dangerous man.”

See the author's own French version entitled LA TOUR SHALOM, published by Editions Hors Commerce in 2005 . SHALOM TOWER SYNDROME was also published in Italian in 2008 by Libreria Edizioni Croce

Albert RUSSO

in Montauk, Long Island, New York

 

 

Sang mêlé

Le grand roman

d'Albert Russo

 

Ginkgo Editeur 

Diffusion/distribution CDE/Sodis

 

http://recherche.fnac.com/

ia119638/Albert-Russo

 

Editions France Loisirs

 

Some of my photos were exhibited at the

Museum of Photography in Lausanne, Switzerland, in Times Square (NYC), at the Louvre Museum, the Pierre Cardin Space, both in Paris, and in Venice

 

Quelques unes de mes photos ont été exposées au

Musée de l'Elysée à Lausanne, à Times Square, au Louvre, à l'espace Cardin à Paris et à Venise

 

 

PHOTO WEBSITES:

 

www.viewbug.com/member/albertrusso
 

https://artavita.com/artists/7612-albert-russo

 

http://artbook.gallery/albert.russo

 

 

 

 


 

 

THE BENEVOLENT AMERICAN

IN THE HEART OF DARKNESS

 

A trilogy of Albert Russo’s

 

award-winning

African novels set in

the former Belgian Congo

and Rwanda-Urundi

 

http://www2.xlibris.com

/bookstore/

bookdisplay.aspx?bookid=26766

 

XLibris - English

- Lettre de James Balwin à Albert Russo à propos de 'Sang Mêlé ':

 

“... J’aime votre écriture, car dans un style policé vous exprimez des sentiments violents, faisant éclater des vérités terrifiantes.”

 

- Voici ce que le grand écrivain contemporain, Edmund White, l'auteur de la magistrale biographie de Jean Genet et de romans à succès, dit de SANG MELE :

.

"Albert Russo a su recréer, à travers les joies et les angoisses d'un jeune métis congolais, les tensions de la vie moderne, qu'il s'agisse des relations entre noirs et blancs, entre le Tiers monde et nos sociétés technologiquement avancées, ou de la question toujours épineuse de l'homosexualité ...  SANG MELE est un roman que l'on ne lache pas, tel quel, il est envoûtant."

 

 

 

The Norwegian Public Schools have chosen Albert Russo's poem LOST IDENTITY for their students' (close to 2,000) final English examinations, before they can enter university.

 

LOST IDENTITY
 
tell me what to do
tell me where to go
am I losing my bearings?
why are you still
by my side?
I don’t recognize you anymore
I can’t remember
the good times
they seem to have dissolved
into a slipstream
give me your hand
I want to feel its pulse
I’m suddenly so cold inside
and terribly spare
because it is not you
I’ve become a stranger to
but myself 
 

 

City of lovers / of wonder

Parie la Grosse Pomme

Indie excellence finalist

 

Both books lauded by the Mayor of New York City

 

 

New York at heart

New York au coeur

 

Indie excellence finalist

 

 

 

Body glorious /

Corps à corps

 

Books And Authors 2008 WINNER

 

Indie excellence finalist

 

 

Photolaureate 2009

 

Ville d’Avray, France

Albert Russo

in his NYC apartment

 

in Montauk, Long Island,

            New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bruxelles au galop

Brussels Ride

 

 

 

 

All photos  and  English book covers are by /

 

Toutes les photos et couvertures de livres en anglais sont de /

 

ALBERT RUSSO

Featured Artist

INSPIRATION ARTBOOK

 

VIEWbug rockstar award

 

twilight in Venice

Svalbard, North Pole

 

and Peer awards

 

The ViewBug team has chosen one of your B&W images for inclusion in our Black & White Masterpieces photo contest! We thought your image was perfect. Your selected photo is:

http://www.viewbug.com/contests/b&w-masterpieces-photo-contest/28489091

VIEWBUG:

Rockstar award for tropical flowers in TLV

 

VIEWBUG Trendsetting:

  1.  Benoît

 

 

2. Singer Salit Fridman

and friend, Tel Aviv

 

  • TOP VIEWBUG PHOTO:
  • RAINBOW IN NORWAY'S FJORDS

 

 

   A L B ER T    R U S S O

 

 

     aging among the fish

 

  with Congolese friends

 

with the Director

of the philantropic  Sarvodaya

in Sri Lanka

 

      

receiving the British    Diversity Award in  London, United Kingdom

 

 

           at UNESCO

 with Director Mr M'Bow  and African friends

 

 

  acting in Paris theater

 

      

 

     with French actress                Suzanne Flon

 

 

     in Brugge, Belgium

 

 

in Milan, Italy

 

        Graduation

New York University

 

     in Berlin, Germany

 

     in Laeken, Belgium

 

presenting his first book  on television

 

 

in Palma de Mallorca,   Spain

 

jiving with his little  sister in Usumbura,  Ruanda-Urundi

 

with his beloved mother in front of lake Kivu, Eastern Congo

 

in Kobe, Japan

 

in Sion, Switzerland

 

with his cousin Reggie in  Rhodesia / Zimbabwe

 

      with his parents in

Cape Town, South Africa

  1. Best Israeli photographer

      35Awards - Moscow

 

Bryggen: Bergen, Norway

Halong Bay - Vietnam

 

Valencia sand art - Spain

BOOKS I - ALBERT RUSSO - LIVRES I

BOOKS I - LIVRES I

David Alexander in The Taj Mahal Review (India, December 2009)

 

THE BLACK ANCESTOR  a novel by Albert Russo

Imago Press - 218 pages - softcover: $ 15 or GBP 11.99

 

 

Novelist Albert Russo's sensitive and distinctive portrait of a lady named Leodine, the central character of The Black Ancestor, shows a depth of insight into the human spirit that invests the story with a poignancy and transcendent quality.  Russo's narrative draws the reader into an exploration of the inner life of feeling to witness the tortuous passages taken by the human spirit in its odyssey toward self-realization.  Set in Africa, it is the story of a heart of light hestitantly advancing amidst what others have called a heart of darkness.

 

The story, set in the Belgian Congo in the years immediately preceding the 1960 post-colonial revolts, tells the story of the coming of age of a young white girl against a backdrop of social and racial prejudices that are sometimes overt and more often concealed, an undercurrent of everyday life that runs beneath the superficial events that form the surface of daily thought and activity.  During this final period of colonial rule by Belgium, Leodine, the daughter of members of the white master class, discovers that she has a black ancestor -- her father, who has since died in an air accident.  The family secret is revealed to her without warning by her uncle Jeff, a beloved family member who is still a youth himself.  Leodine confides her new knowledge to her mother, by now a neurotic and semi-alcoholic widow who has taken a lover, a Flemish national named Piet who holds a management position in the nationally run railroad. 

Cautioned to tell no one of the family secret by her mother, Leodine becomes unable to keep it bottled up inside.  She ultimately confides in a school friend, Yolande, who is a mulatto, and who has been permitted to attend school in the white section of town largely because her skin color is light.  In time Leodine meets Yolande's brother, Mario-Tende, who, though a teacher gifted with a keen mind, must live in the section of town reserved for native Congolese.  Mario's skin color renders him too dark to live amidst colonial whites.  Yet Leodine is powerfully drawn to Mario, who she accepts as a tutor in native languages spoken by few during this period when the official tongue of the colony is French.  Mario inevitably makes a sexual advance to his young pupil, which Leodine gently rebuffs, and the next and penultimate scenes of the narrative take Leodine away from her familiar domestic milieu to the lush and often exotic wilderness of central Africa during a vacation trip with her mother and Piet, now her stepfather.  In the course of the trip the family encounters a coworker of Piet's, Rupert, and the coworker's friend, Arnaud, who seduces, or more accurately, date-rapes, Leodine one night. 

On the family's return home, Leodine resumes her friendship with Yolande and Mario, whose advances this time succeed, resulting in another date-rape episode. Leodine confides both experiences to her mother with the result that she's sent to live in the United States with distant family members.  The remaining portion of The Black Ancestor ties together the storyline, and we learn that Leodine joins a convent and later

 

returns to her native Africa to work with the Peace Corps, while Mario (who she never 

again sees), having chosen the life of a revolutionary, loses his life in the course of Congolese civil unrest in the wake of national movement for independence.

The story, which is narrated in the first person by Leodine, is told from the perspective of an adult who is reflecting back on a part of her life that has left a profound and indelible impression, a formative period in which Leodine's personality as an adult was molded, and the directions she would follow in later years set in adamantine.  The tale is not one of sound and fury, which may be for the best, as tales of sound and fury often signify nothing.  Instead The Black Ancestor weaves a subtle tapestry on narrative's loom, relating the episodic life's journey with a more subdued voice, as if to say that the truly defining turns of our lives come upon us quietly, like thieves in the night; thieves that steal something away from our souls, and leave behind an abominable emptiness that we must somehow fill in order to go on living, and to continue growing into our future selves.  This message transcends the more superficial -- because dated -- subject of the main narrative lines dealing with colonial class prejudices based on ethnicity and the artificial biases that throw up color lines that can't be crossed, even by those of 

"mixed blood," such as Yolande and Leodine herself, who are inwardly, if not outwardly, bound by the aggregate odium of these culturally determined "blemishes."

 

In fact, Russo says to us, our upward progress to higher states of self-awareness and being can be thwarted by equally muted yet sinister turns of fate that may steal away one's very life, such as the accidents that claim both Leodine's father and uncle. Beyond this Russo seems to be echoing, in a sense, the highest wisdom espoused by a character, named Candide, created by another author who wrote in French, whose final pronouncement on life, following a series of travails, was that the highest good depended on "cultivating one's garden," a rebuff to the Reverend Pangloss famed for his insistance that this was "the best of all possible worlds."  In short, find yourself, and you will find both the answer and the way, even if the world in which you live is hardly Panglossian.  Something like this modus vivendi distinguishes the book's more serene characters from those, like Leodine, who is buffeted by life's often painful vicissitudes. Yolande's ethnically mixed parents, the family's long-time servants, and an old Tutsi chieftain and renowned wise man, Mwami Ndeze, who is encountered during the family's African idylls, all seem to possess this Candide-like quality.  In short they know themselves, they know their strengths, limitations, and places in the greater scheme of things, and perhaps because of this they emerge from life's tests largely unscathed and relatively content.

 

Russo's understated but gripping narrative in The Black Ancestor  ranks the book, in my opinion, with other great rites-of-passage novels like Hermann Hesse's first novel, Peter Camenzind, or the later fiction of James T. Farrell, such as My Days of Anger, a novel written with a similarly understated literary touch.  In addition, Russo gives us some striking scenes of the African landscape, as well as incisive commentary on the social and political forces and events that have formed the continent's recent past and continue to forge its sometimes turbulent present.  Albert Russo's The Black Ancestor is another fine work of novelistic storytelling by a master craftsman at the top of his form and is highly recommended for many reasons, including its ability to remind us of the existence of living hearts and souls in a world that all too often teems with darkness.

 

 

 

 

 

BOUNDARIES OF EXILE/ Conditions of Hope 

by Albert Russo and Martin Tucker 
  
A primer on exile through stories, poems, and essays 
  
A personal and passionate search for definitions of identity from two writers who have witnessed the crimes of exile and recorded the triumphs of survival beyond such adversities. Russo and Tucker explore the struggles, both humorous and tragic, that determine and reveal human character through the experiences of exile. In this book the authors migrate from Greece to Central Africa, from Italy to the United States and beyond.

 

Excerpts


1) from Albert Russo's memoir "Sandro & Gloria": 

We arrived in Kigoma, Belgian Congo, on December 2, 1926, and on the same day we boarded a small ship which brought us across Lake Tanganyika, to the town of Albertville, our first leg in the Belgian Congo. 

What a surprise to meet there Beno, one of my childhood friends! We were so happy to be together that he put the two of us up in his tiny hut-like abode for several days. At last we had what resembled a bed, a real mattress, with proper sheets and pillowcases, and we ate fresh vegetables, grilled chicken and tropical fruits, such as mangoes, pomegranates, avocadoes and papaya, which we had never tasted before, and yet relished to the last morsel. At first I found mangoes to be somewhat bland, though they were quite juicy, the papaya, we ate with a zest of lemon and, contrary to the European habit of having avocadoes as an appetizer, we took it for the desert, with a sprinkle of cane sugar. Then there were the small but oh so sweet bananas, called here langue de chat (cat’s tongue). What luxury, since back home only the very rich could afford some of these exotic fruits! 
To us boys, coming from the impoverished island of Rhodes, where, this must be stressed, we never lacked good home-made food, with fresh vegetables and seasoned fruit - actually, I longed for my mother’s delicious Jewish-Turkish dishes -, it all seemed as if we were living a fairy tale, full of new sounds and potent smells. Some of them were terrifying, especially at night, we even asked our host if a lion or some hungry crocodile might come and eat us while we were asleep. He laughed his head off, yet kept us wondering. And how delighted we were the next morning at cock’s crow, seeing that we were still alive and in relative good health, although both of us had lost a lot of weight, for, during the long boat trip from Port Said to Dar es Salaam, and the train journey that brought us to the village preceding Kigoma, where the Greek hotelier agreed to take us on for a few days, we subsisted on canned food, dried dates and stale bread. 
Beno accompanied us to the station in Albertville, and we boarded a train for Kabalo, which had only wooden planks for seats. Steam locomotives in those days were extremely slow and often broke down, but we did arrive the following day at Kabalo, where we embarked onto the Prince Léopold, which sailed us down the Lualaba river. This too was a unique experience, that lasted a little less than a week. The boat had to stop quite often for refuelling - its boilers functioned with wood coal - which allowed our captain and other amateur hunters to use their skills and bring us back some game; this is how I got my first taste of antelope, wild pheasant and warthog meat. 
The boat also served as a floating market for the villagers ashore. Hardware and clothes were sold in exchange for fresh fish, fowl, vegetables and fruit. More than once did the boat get stuck, because of large banks of papyrus. Hours of work and dozens of African hands were needed to remove them. 
That river crossing remains one of the most spectacular adventures I experienced in the heartland of the Congo. Bukama was the terminal point. 

My new boss, Mr. Robert Toledano, came to receive me on the quay. We barely got acquainted and two hours later I jumped on the train headed for Kamina, in northern Katanga, which was to be my final destination. 


2) Three poems by Martin Tucker: 

"A Traveler’s Exile" 

The heavy news came airily in an email format: 
He will be confined to a wheel chair for life 
And in time go blind. 
It’s a rare disease though common enough to him now, 
Who once strode through Eastern Europe and Western Africa 
And up the steppes of the Caucusus. 
A handsome boy he chose to prove manhood by terrain 
And hid his glamour in coarse cloth, 
Though even then his smile undressed 
Addresses on envelopes of sealed desire. 

A blanket on still legs, 
A hand to lead him through a garden 
Whose flowers he will no longer see, 
And yet he may hear a bird’s wing 
Or touch a look coming his way, 
His visitors accepting the fall of seasons, 
And he finding an odor of life in winter’s disease. 



"Why I Teach the Holocaust" 


I teach the Holocaust to touch my skin. 
I have many skins. 
I am far from the core of an onion. 

I teach the Holocaust 
To wear beneath my skin 
An awareness of skin 
Beyond my casual wear. 

I teach the Holocaust 
To remember 
No peel of skin disappears. 



"Writing a Holocaust Poem" 


I think of those I have not known, 
Who had no choice and little consequent frustration, 
Only attrition in the knot of their situation, 
And losing their lives in a way-station. 

And those who survived, what must they have thought? 
Was it habit, an apparel of conviction worn 
When other clothes of distinction were denied? 

Sometimes I see myself in their clothes, 
And wonder if I would have the wish to survive. 
I’d go step by step in the uniform habit 
Maybe believing in the work ethic advertised: 
Work will make you free. Dig deep for a learning of the hands. 

Did tired intellectuals think this way, 
When the manual of their labor moved them to a new class, 
Wearied beyond thought to lay their heads to sleep 
And wake to a circle of humiliation? 

By which day did distinctions disappear, 
When thoughts became simply a desire to stay alive? 
Was memory killed 
In the yearning to survive? 

Mostly I wonder 
Did they talk at all?


 

La Tour Shalom

 
Editions Hors Commerce - Hors Bleu
ISBN : 2-915286-36-1
190 pages - Prix : 13,90 euros

.

Alexis est un sang mêlé, fils d’un père juif italien et d’une très belle métisse. Parvenu à l’âge adulte, le jeune homme ressent de manière complexe sa triple identité - africaine, judaïque, catholique - et décide de partir à la recherche de son ”tiers juif” en séjournant en Israël avec sa femme.

.

Là, le passé resurgit, éclats de souvenirs aux odeurs et couleurs de l’Afrique et de l’Italie, mêlé à l’étrange et dangereuse beauté de Tel Aviv et des territoires environnants. La richesse, la diversité des rencontres, la gentillesse de leur logeuse à Ashkelon (une ville près de la frontière de Gaza), laissent cependant Alexis dans un état second, d’absence à lui-même et à son couple, qui se découvre en pleine crise.

.

Un roman poignant et bariolé, construit sur la rupture des sens et du rythme, riche en images fortes et en émotions. 

ITALIANO

Versione italiana della "Shalom Tower Syndrome" romanica : Vedere tabuli navigatore in cima, sulla sinistra « LIBRI IN ITALIANO »

.

FRANCAIS

Sang Mêlé ou ton fils Léopold


roman d'Albert Russo Ginkgo éditions, Paris, 2007 (diffusion/distribution CDE/Sodis - groupe Gallimard).

 

“Au Congo belge, dans les années 50, Léo est adopté par Harry Wilson, américain en mal de paternité. Celui-ci et sa servante, Mama Malkia, opulente africaine au coeur d’or, comblent Léo d’affection. Bientôt, il va à l’école dans un établissement pour Européens. Le jeune métis, en proie aux moqueries de ses camarades blancs, se sent exclus, rejeté. Ni tout à fait blanc, ni tout à fait noir. Il se noue d’amitié avec Ishaya, petit juif, qui devient son plus grand complice. Puis, il fait l’apprentissage de la vie. Entraîné par un copain plus âgé dans une maison close, il fait une désastreuse initiation amoureuse. Il apprend, lors d’une scène violente, l’homosexualité de son père adoptif. Ce beau roman, dominé par Léo, jeune métis, traite en profondeur de la difficulté à vivre sa différence. Rare témoignage sur l’époque coloniale, Albert Russo décrit dans un style soutenu, des personnages sincères, des sentiments intenses. Un livre poignant, réaliste et fort. Une vraie réussite.”  

 

Lettre de James Balwin à Albert Russo à propos de 'Sang Mêlé ':

 

“... J’aime votre écriture, car dans un style policé vous exprimez des sentiments violents, faisant éclater des vérités terrifiantes.”

 

- Voici ce que le grand écrivain contemporain, Edmund White, l'auteur de la magistrale biographie de Jean Genet et de romans à succès dit de SANG MELE:

 

- "Albert Russo a su recréer, à travers les joies et les angoisses d'un jeune métis congolais, les tensions de la vie moderne, qu'il s'agisse des relations entre noirs et blancs, entre le Tiers monde et nos sociétés technologiquement avancées, ou de la question toujours épineuse de l'homosexualité ...  SANG MELE est un roman que l'on ne lache pas, tel quel, il est envoûtant." 

 

     Coniglio Editore - Italiano       Editions France Loisirs - Français      

Versione italiana della "Sang mêlé" romanica :  Vedere tabuli navigatore in cima, sulla sinistra « LIBRI IN ITALIANO » - “Sangue misto”

 

 

FRANCAIS

Tour du monde de la poésie gay

 

 

 

2004
Editions Hors Commerce, Paris
€ 11,90 - ISBN 2-915286-29-9

 

 

 .

Yannis Palikani - Salonique, Grèce - né en 1958 -
L’annonce faite à Maria - traduit du grec par Yanni Andreos

Maman, ce que j’ai à t’annoncer est grave
Dis-moi que ce n’est pas sérieux
Non, maman, ne te préoccupe* pas
pour ma santé, je vais très bien.
Laisse-moi donc deviner
Oh, c’est une surprise!
Oui, tu peux appeler ça comme ça
Ca y est, tu vas enfin te marier
après toutes ces années où
tu m’as fait languir.
Comment s’appelle-t-elle?
Est-elle d’ici, est-ce que je la connais?
Ne t’emballe pas, maman,
cela fait des années que j’essayais
de vous faire comprendre à papa et à toi.
Maintenant quil s’en est allé,
que Dieu ait son âme,
tu es la seule à qui je puis m’ouvrir
Quand j’étais petit, j’aimais
fouiller dans tes affaires
Et tandis que vous partiez en visite,
papa et toi, je portais tes jupes en cachette
même si elles étaient trois fois trop grandes
je me mettais du rouge à lèvres
et me peignais même les ongles
c’étais le vernis rose-saumon que je préférais
j’essayais tes chaussures à talon
tes soutien-gorge et tes petites culottes en dentelles
tu étais et es toujours restée mon idole
et plus que tout au monde,
je désirais te ressembler.
Je sais, tu es un acteur né, mon fils
Maman, tu n’as donc pas compris?
Tes copains me racontaient les
mille et une blagues que tu leur faisais
J’ai enfanté d’un pitre.
Pas d’un pitre, maman, d’un travesti,
d’un homosexuel, d’un homme qui aime les hommes
Dis-moi que je n’ai rien entendu, Yannis
Dis-moi que je suis devenue sourde
Je t’aime, mère chérie, déesse de mon enfance
Qu’est-ce que tu dis, qu’est ce que tu dis?

.

Carlino Rossi - Agrigente, Sicile, Italie - né en 1975 -
A travers la lucarne

sa paume effleure la plante de mon pied
et s’y pose, rêve de papillon,
comme la langue-velours
d’un labrador endormi
s’enroulant autour de mon sexe
le moindre mouvement de ma part
pourrait briser ce calme éthéré
j’entends à peine sa respiration
et retiens la mienne
instant de pure harmonie
où mes yeux s’embrument
je n’ose y porter le doigt
malgré la démangeaison
qui les gagne
les battements de mon coeur
dont l’écho me parvient
comme une partition ressuscitée
deviennent de plus en plus sourds
je frôle le précipice
sachant que cette parcelle
de bonheur s’envolera
dès que mon amant
aura changé de position
pour l’instant, je savoure,
la bouche entrouverte
contrôlant chacun de mes muscles
deux de ses doigts se rétractent
un frisson me parcourt l’échine
cet enchantement va se briser
non, ce n’était qu’une fausse alerte
et mon amant se met à ronronner
tout doucement
de quoi rêve-t-il, de qui,
avec ce sourire figé?
son sourcil droit frémit
simple tic nerveux ou l’éclair
d’une image merveilleuse?
mon thorax commence à me faire mal
mes membres s’enkylosent
mon autre pied se raidit
et, contre toute attente,
c’est moi qui casse la magie
en repoussant cette main
si apaisante qui m’a offert
l’avant goût du paradis

 

ENGLISH / FRANCAIS

Norway to Spiltzberg
Norway to Spiltzberg

 

Norway to Spitzberg


Norway to Spitzberg - 144 pages photos: Albert Russo - Blurb.com
Hardcover / Edition de luxe: $ 40 - 35 € Softcover / Couverture souple: $ 30 - 25 €
The majestic views of the Norwegian fjords and of the polar circle / Les fiords norvégiens et la magie du cercle polaire

 

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Viennese/kaleidoscope/viennois
Viennese/kaleidoscope/viennois

Viennese / kaleidoscope / viennois

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160 pages -photos: Albert Russo - Blurb.com Hardcover / Edition de luxe: $ 40 - € 35
Softcover / Couverture souple: $ 30 - € 25

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Vienna, Austria, the formal imperial capital and the modern city / Vienne, la cité impériale et la ville moderne

 

 

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New York at heart / au coeur


Xlibris (USA) Photos by / d’Albert Russo. Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com ) 2007. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 Orders@Xlibris.com  - www.xlibris.com  - Tel:1.888.795.4274 - Fax: 610-915-0294

 

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City of Lovers - City of Wonder / Paris la Grosse Pomme

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Xlibris (USA) Photos by / d’Albert Russo. Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2007. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 Orders@Xlibris.com  - www.xlibris.com  - Tel:1.888.795.4274 - Fax: 610-915-0294

 

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Quirks / Eclats

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Photos by / d’Albert Russo, Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2007. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 direct order / commande directe: www.xlibris.com/AlbertRusso.html Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 Orders@Xlibris.com  - www.xlibris.com  - Tel:1.888.795.4274 - Fax: 610-915-0294

 

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Israel at heart / au coeur

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Photos by / d’Albert Russo, Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2007. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 direct order / commande directe: www.xlibris.com/AlbertRusso.html Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 Orders@Xlibris.com  - www.xlibris.com  - Tel:1.888.795.4274 - Fax: 610-915-0294

 

 

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Granada, Ronda & Costa del Sol

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Photos by / d’Albert Russo. Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2007. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 Orders@Xlibris.com  - www.xlibris.com  - Tel:1.888.795.4274 - Fax: 610-915-0294

 

 

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Rainbow Nature

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- Xlibris (USA) Photos by / d’Albert Russo. Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2007. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 Orders@Xlibris.com  - www.xlibris.com  - Tel:1.888.795.4274 - Fax: 610-915-0294

 

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Italia Nostra

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Xlibris (USA) Photos by / d’Albert Russo. Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2007. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 Orders@Xlibris.com  - www.xlibris.com  - Tel:1.888.795.4274 - Fax: 610-915-0294

 

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Pasion de España

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Photos by / d’Albert Russo. Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2007. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 Orders@Xlibris.com  - www.xlibris.com  - Tel:1.888.795.4274 - Fax: 610-915-0294

 

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Sardinia / Sardaigne

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-Xlibris (USA) Photos by / d’Albert Russo. Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2006. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 direct order / commande directe: http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/ bookdisplay.asp?bookid=33357 Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 Orders@Xlibris.com  - www.xlibris.com  - Tel:1.888.795.4274 - Fax: 610-915-0294

 

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Body Glorious/Corps à Corps
Body Glorious/Corps à Corps

Body Glorious / Corps à Corps
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Photos by / d’Albert Russo. Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2006. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 direct order / commande directe: http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/ bookdisplay.asp?bookid=34031 Xlibris Corporation, 2  International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 Orders@Xlibris.com  - www.xlibris.com  - Tel:1.888.795.4274 - Fax: 610-915-0294

 

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Brussels Ride / Bruxelles au galop

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-Xlibris (USA) Photos by / d’Albert Russo, texts in English and in French by / textes de / Eric Tessier / en français et en anglais. Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2006. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 direct order / commande directe: http://www2.xlibris.com/bookstore/ bookdisplay.asp?bookid=30641 Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 Orders@Xlibris.com  - www.xlibris.com  - Tel:1.888.795.4274 - Fax: 610-915-0294

 

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A poetic biography / Biographie poétique,

2 volumes / 2 tomes

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Photos by / d’Albert Russo, texts in English and in French by / textes de / Eric Tessier / en français et en anglais. Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2005. 80 pages. Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99 Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99 direct order / commande directe: www.xlibris.com/AlbertRusso.html

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Saint Malo with love

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Photos by / d’Albert Russo,
poems in English and in French by / poèmes de / Eric Tessier, Albert Russo / en français et en anglais.
Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2005. 80 pages.
Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99
Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99
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SRI LANKA

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Photos by / d’Albert Russo,
poems in English and in French by / poèmes de / Eric Tessier, Albert Russo, Dhammapada, / en français et en anglais.
Published in the USA / Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2005. 80 pages.
Softcover / Edition normale - $ 26.99
Hardcover / Edition de luxe - $ 32.99

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Mexicana

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Photos by / de Albert Russo
Poems by / poèmes / poemas de Albert Russo,
Eric Tessier, Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijóo.
Published by / Edité par / Editor: Xlibris (www.xlibris.com )
USA 2005. 80 pages.
Hardcover / Edition de luxe / Edición de lujo: $32.99
Softcover / Edition normale / Edición normal: $26.99

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I"

En/in France

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Photos by / de Albert Russo
Poems by / poèmes de Albert Russo,
Eric Tessier, Shakespeare, Victor Hugo & Co.
Published by / Edité par Xlibris (www.xlibris.com)
USA 2005. 80 pages.
Hardcover / Edition de luxe: $32.99
Softcover / Edition normale: $26.99

 

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Chinese puzzle chinois

Photos d’Albert Russo et poèmes de Eric Tessier, Albert Russo, Daniel Michelson et Sébastien Doubinsky, en français et en anglais.
Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2005. 80 pages.
Website: www.xlibris.com
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Edition normale - $ 26.99   Edition de luxe - $ 32.99

 

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ENGLISH / FRANCAIS

AfricaSoul

Photos d’Albert Russo et et d'Elena Peters, poèmes de Eric Tessier, Albert Russo, Jérémy Fraise, en français et en anglais.
Publié aux USA par Xlibris (www.Xlibris.com) 2005. 80 pages.
Website: www.xlibris.com
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The savannah stretched in monotonous coppertones, dotted here and there by blisterlike anthills, then tiny clusters of huts would unstring under the plane's tarnished wings. But the bush reigned sovereign and ubiquitous, as if between it and the atmosphere any other object or living particle became an intruder.

***

Partout s'étendait la brousse, inlassable, seule à seule avec l'atmosphère, comme si entre elles toute vie devenait une intruse. Dorloté par le bourdonnement mécanique, Fabien ferma les yeux pour retrouver un peu de son âme africaine que sept ans d'éloignement avaient ensablée. A soft rustle drew him out of his musings: the stewardess was passing a tray of candies. She wore her hair in narrow braids and the whiteness of her teeth sparkled in contrast with her ebony features. Fabien stared at her for a while, projecting his thoughts into the velvety pupils of the young woman, imagining her draped in a gaudy loin-cloth. She was startingly beautiful

***

Un frôlement le sortit de ses méditations: souriante, l'hôtesse lui tendit un plateau de bonbons. Une chevelure artistement défrisée encadrait son visage d'ébène. Sa bouche lippue découvrait un émail éclatant, son nez à peine épaté achevait de la rendre belle. Fabien la fixa un moment, prolongeant ses pensées dans les pupilles veloutées de la jeune femme. Il l’imaginait drapée d’un pagne aux couleurs de l’arc-en-ciel.

 

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ENGLISH

"The Crowded World of Solitude, Volume 1,

The collected stories"

ISBN: 1-4134-7016-5 (Paperback)

ISBN: 1-4134-7017-3 (Hardcover) 

503 pages - To order this book: www.xlibris.com

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WORLD LITERATURE TODAY:

 

Critic and professor of English at C. W. Post of Long Island University, MARTIN TUCKER has published over twenty volumes of literary criticism, among them The Critical Temper, Modern Commonwealth Literature, and Modern British Literature (in Continuum's Library of Literary Criticism series). He is the editor of the prize-winning literary journal Confrontation, and the author of Africa in Modern Literature and other works. His poetry has been collected in Homes ot Locks and mysteries, and appears in leading periodicals. He is a member of the Executive Board of PEN American Center and has served on the Governing Board of Poetry Society of America. He has also written a biography of Joseph Conrad and of Sam Shepard, both critically acclaimed.

 

“Albert Russo’s collected stories included in this hefty volume constitute an excellent testimony on the writer's ability to create fiction which is both entertaining and thought-provoking in a surprising variety of contexts. All of Mr Russo's readers know that he can write as easily about his native Africa as about present-day New York or Italy; and the collection, with stories set in different places and milieus, highlights his special talent at transporting his readers from one scene to another, in a kind of “sentimental journey” through human experience. Science fiction and fantasy are other paths trodden by Albert Russo in his quest for a pre-Babel reconciliation of man with himself in all his constitutive dimensions, linguistic and social, but also generic and transcendental.” General introduction to Albert Russo’s work by Martin Tucker: “Albert Russo’s art and life are all of a unique piece, and that piece is a plurality of cultures. Born in what was then the Belgian Congo and now is Congo/Zaire, he grew up in Central and Southern Africa and writes in both English and French, his two ‘mother tongues’. With his intense interest in African life, the young Russo also engaged with knowledge beyond narrow stratifications of colonial custom. As a youth he left Africa for college in New York (where he attended New York University). For many years he has been resident in Paris. Wherever he has lived, Russo has concerned himself with one hard-burning commitment: to achieve an illumination of vision in his writing that suggests by the force of its light some direction for understanding of human behavior and action. He draws on the many cultures he has been privileged to know, and he is always respectul of diversity. But Russo is no mere reporter. While he works with words, and while his work is concerned with place and the spirit of place, he is more interested in visitation than visits. Almost every fiction Russo has written involves a visitation, a hearing from another world that reverberates into a dénouement and revolution of the protagonist’s present condition. These visitations are of course a form of fabulism--that is, utilizing the fable as a subtext of the animal nature of man. Russo’s fabulism however is not in the line of traditional mythology (perhaps mythologies is a better term, since Russo draws from a variety of folklore and consummate literary executions). In one of his recent fictions, for example, he writes of a man who falls in love with a tree--his love is so ardent he wills himself into a tree in order to root out any foreignness in his love affair. Thus, Russo’s “family tree”, the mating of woodland Adam and Eve, becomes in his creation not only a multicultural act but a cross-fertilization of the cultures he has drawn from. In this personal fable Russo suggests the Greek myth of Pan love and even the Adamastor legend, that Titan who has turned cruelly into a rock out of unbridled passion for a goddess. Russo suggests other legends as well, and certainly the crossing of boundaries, psychological, emotional as well as physical and territorial--hybrid phenomena now sweeping into the attention of all of Africa and the Middle East--is to be found within the feelingful contours of his tale. Fabulism is now a recognized presence in our literary lives. It goes by other names: magic realism is one of them. Underneath all the manifestations of this phenomenon is the artistic credo that creation is larger than life, and that the progeny created enhances the life that gave being to it. In sum, the artist is saying that life is larger than life if given the opportunity to be lived magnificently. Russo’s is certainly a part of this willingness to experiment beyond the observable. His fiction represents, in essence, a belief, in the endless perceivable possibilities of mind. Its humor is at times dark, however, and perhaps this color of mood is a reflection of Russo’s background and biography. For his art, while enlarging, is not showered with sun. His dark hues are those of ironic vision. Russo may be said to be very much a part of the beginning of this century. His concentration is on the inevitabilities of unknowingness; thus his resort is to the superrational as a way of steadying himself in the darkness. At the same time his work cannot be said to be tragic, for the unending endings of his fictions suggest a chance of progress, if not completion of one’s appointed task, worlds meet and become larger worlds in Russo’s work; people change within his hands. It is a pleasure to pay homage to Russo’s achievement.” Critic and professor of English at C. W. Post of Long Island University, MARTIN TUCKER has published over twenty volumes of literary criticism, among them The Critical Temper, Modern Commonwealth Literature, and Modern British Literature (in Continuum's Library of Literary Criticism series). He is the editor of the prize-winning literary journal Confrontation, and the author of Africa in Modern Literature and other works. His poetry has been collected in Homes ot Locks and mysteries, and appears in leading periodicals. He is a member of the Executive Board of PEN American Center and has served on the Governing Board of Poetry Society of America. He has also written a biography of Joseph Conrad and of Sam Shepard, both critically acclaimed.

 

 

David Alexander, Small Press Review

 

  As goes the Zen proverb, the difference between heaven and hell is the thickness of a leaf. In the stories making up the Crowded World of Solitude collection Albert Russo may be said to be writing about what Indian gurus call avidya, and what Tibetan holy men call namparshespa, the darkness of the mind, obscured by multiple veils of ignorance. Most, indeed virtually all, of the characters in Russo's short stories are lost in existential mazes, and most don't have a clue about how to find their way out.
  In some ways I see Albert Russo as a kind of shaman or holy man. Writing is simultaneously his religion and the cross to which he's nailed. He walks a path through a labyrinth, searching for truth, and he does not fear the distant snorts and echoes of cloven hoofs that may signal the presence of a Minotaur in the maze. He seems to have sought for this core reality -- call it samadhi -- amid the four corners of the earth, and many of the stories do indeed seem much like reports from the bloody beachheads of existence, Russo as life's war correspondent pinned down by enemy fire making an effort to be heard above the din of mortars dropping closer and closer with each true line, each true sentence.In reading these stories you get the impression that all Russo's characters are playing "truth or dare" games with one another, facing off in mortal combats in which the losers can end up maimed for life; the special grace or holiness that invests them at first destroyed or severely damaged by contact with the unclean. But that's one of the things Russo's telling us -- life, beneath the surface, is like this. We are as innocent and unknowing of the full implications of the transformations and metamorphoses we undergo as water changing to ice or the head of a match struck suddenly into flame.
   This collection is as much a manifesto as a retrospective, as much a biography as a work of fiction, as much an engrossing statement of fact as a diverting concoction of fable. The stories, sometimes outwardly simple, are dense with meaning beneath the surface. Read once, most will haunt the mind till read at least twice.

 

 

Also reviewed by David Alexander in The Taj Mahal Review (India)

Albert Russo’s Short Stories: Crystals in a Shock Wave

 

  Albert Russo's collected short fiction, published in three volumes by Domhan Books, is a story cycle that spans nearly twenty-five years and is both chronicle and allegory of its author’s life and times.
  The first volume of the trilogy, Beyond the Great Water, is divided into two sections, part one being African Stories, part two being mainstream short fiction. Another collection of Russo’s mainstream stories appears in the second volume, Unmasking Hearts, the last portion of the book being a collection of essays. The Age of the Pearl, the third and final volume, contains Russo’s fantasy and science fiction writings, as well as a miscellany of his short, satirical and often darkly comic Ripov stories.
  The theme of metamorphosis, of the transformational moment and revelational event, of existential sin and arcane punishment, seems to run through all three books. I am uncertain of whether Russo himself is aware of this or not, for his writings surely probe the depths of his own unconscious mind from which they dredge up archetypal images from a deep internal reservoir. The stories deal with the mutability of existence, and at their conclusions, something, usually the characters, sometimes society or even larger aspects of the physical universe, is changed forever; often, it must be added, for the worse. Sex is a frequent catalyst for profound change. Many characters in the stories experience a kind of death and rebirth as a result of engagement in the sexual act. It is sometimes as if the participants themselves, rather than a third entity, are born of these carnal unions and the re-enactments of original sin they symbolize.
  Many, indeed most, of the stories from these three books have the sharp bite of biographical truth, and this poignancy is especially present in the first stories, set in the Congo and North Africa, for they have the almost delirious vitality and revelational quality of youth’s first knowledge of good and evil, made hyper-traumatic because set against the strange and exotic background of the alien Islamic and African cultures of these remote places.
  In Tunisian Fever, from the African Stories section of Beyond the Great Water, a young traveler experiences a profound sensual awakening amidst the souks of Tunis in a tale whose delirious, dreamlike quality is in some ways reminiscent of Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. In Magic Fingers, a Berber tribesman has an affair with a rich American tourist woman on vacation, and in the process he is enigmatically corrupted by the union, losing his identity in a transgression against himself. In both cases sexual debauch triggers the characters‚ acute transformations, yet the nature of these transformational events is mitigated by the quality and aspect of the experiences that produced them. In the former, the character’s transformation is positive, in the latter, the character’s self-transgression swings the existential pendulum to the negative pole.
  Other awakenings in the book come about as a result of outside agencies, beyond the control of the main characters. In The Discovery, the protagonist realizes that his father's despised mistress, whom he plans to blackmail as an unfaithful libertine, has a daughter bearing a resemblance so close it becomes apparent that the young girl is his natural sister. In the title story, a native African returns to the Belgian Congo to visit his daughter after a prolonged sojourn in the U.S. The plane crashes, and a charred letter is all that is left -- in fulfillment of a native prophesy that the bearer will be consumed by fire.
  In Part II of Beyond the Great Water the lead story, The Sephardic Sisters, deals with the slow but inexorable dispossession of two elderly sisters by the new wife of the brother with whom they have lived for years and to whom they have ministered as surrogate mothers. In this tale with Oedipal undertones, those who have a rightful place in the home are expelled by a capriciously vindictive newcomer to the household ménage; an external and overwhelming force leading to their ultimate disendowment. Death in Venice is a theme of Bridges of Sighs, one of several plays for voices that appear now and again throughout the trilogy. Here, once more, a love affair (sex as original sin) results in the demise of one of the participants, although unlike other more metaphysical acts of destruction in Russo's stories, this one is all to real -- a suicide in one of the minor canals of Venice.
  Twenty-one Days chronicles a young man's rite of passage at a high-class rest spa in France. Here is the corruption of a credulous youth by older, already corrupted persons. As with other stories in the collection, here transitions in life are more like the progressive stages of a fatal and incurable disease, a dissipative process where individuals are not so much befriended as infected. Russo seems to be saying, at least on one level, that all too often the map is confused with the territory, the mask with the face behind it, and it is assumptions, often false, instead of realities, that guide our perceptions and passages through life, even those of profound importance to our development as fully functional human beings.
  In Memory Gap, the collection's penultimate story, set immediately after the signing of the Carter-era Israel-Egypt peace treaty, a young man is beset by a species of melancholia religiosa akin to "Jerusalem Complex" while on a trip to Israel. In a narrative of spiritual death and rebirth, the protagonist is haunted by the memory of the bizarre killing of his friend at the hands of an Egyptian border guard who gunned him down after an accidental and innocent night-crossing of the border. Again, a meaningless line is crossed -- the transgressor has not strayed very far at all -- but the consequences are brutal, final and total. Images of these transgressions pervade the story, such as those found in the following passage.
  But now a violent undercurrent reminded him that he was not a denizen of the sea, even if eons ago he might have been one. He felt like a usurper, and he would be treated as such. Scanning the surface around him, he encountered a slick, unfathomable giant in whose net he was trapped. If he lost the control of his movements and thrashed about, he’d be gobbled up like a vulgar worm. The more he thought of this, the more his lungs burnt, those lungs which in their evolution had foresaken their initial role by adapting to the atmosphere. He swam towards the jagged cliffs and, gripped by fear, hurled himself headlong to counter the tide.

  In Unmasking Hearts, Volume II of the trilogy, Flavio's Dilemma narrates how a young man is seduced first by an older woman -- she is a portrait painter who begins by asking him to pose for her and proceeds to turn him into her lover -- and then by the woman's teenage son, the central character's peer. In The Break, a young man is caught up in the turmoil created by his parents' imminent divorce, and here again, outside forces place the protagonist in a position of helplessness from which he cannot hope to emerge unscathed. A passage from Flavio’s Dilemma may serve by way of illustration.

When Samantha insisted, Flavio meekly accepted. Soon thereafter, he asked to be excused, for the wine had gone to his head. He came back from the bathroom, relieved, and seeing how livid he had become, Samantha suggested that he take a rest in her own bedroom. Before he could answer, he saw himself flung across the queen-sized bed of his host and being soon undressed. He half made a gesture of protestation but was devoid of any volition and minutes later he fell into a long slumber peopled with wild sensual images where succulent carnivorous flowers opened up to lure oversized red bananas then clutched them between their treacherous pincer-like hairs until, bit by bit, inexorably, their substance would be ingested.

 

 

ENGLISH

"The Crowded World of Solitude, Volume 2,

The collected poems"

539 pages - ISBN: 1-4134-7018-1 (Paperback); 

ISBN: 1-4134-7019-X (Hardcover)

To order this book: Website: www.xlibris.com   

Email: Orders@Xlibris.com  

Fax:610-915-0294 - Telephone: 1.888.795.4274 x 276 or 215.923.4686 Mail:Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 USA.

 

You may also order the book through Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Booksamillion, etc, but it will take longer than with Xlibris.

 

 

Preface by LEIGH EDUARDO, British poet and musician:

 

“I have never met Albert Russo and yet, through his writing, I feel I have had that privilege. He possesses that rare and enviable talent of being able to say what is important in a very few words. His contributions to the literary world are amazingly varied, reminding one of an intellectual butterfly - able to flit from one topic to another, but having first drained it of its essential qualities. Russo writes at all levels - a compulsive creator who is always going to have something important, or different , or both, to say.
His work reaches into the very soul of contemporary living. Here, one comes to grips with many contemporary problems, all beautifully crafted and possessing the Russo hallmark of subtle observation. Each poem is a gem in its own right.”


EXPECTANCY

there’s a world at peace and there’s a world at war
the frontiers between the two shift and overlap
like waves over the breakers at low tide
and as you watch the evening news
you feel your heart skitter across the water
on the safe side, or so you will yourself to believe
but when in the dead of night you switch off the bedlamp
the rumblings under your skin
at first distant and familiar
start sending out portentous signals
then, somewhere around the solar plexus
there’s an expectancy of pain
searing as the alarm caused by a misfired thunder
it shoots through the arteries to the cortex
making the flesh quiver in its wake
and suddenly the echo of a reverberating crackle
turns your entire body into an electric web
so tightly packed you instinctively
embrace all the destructive power
of mankind’s folly


The Roundness of Albert Russo, an introduction by Leslie Schenk

 

To be a multilingual reader is bliss, we know. To be a multilingual writer must be a curse. Imagine receiving the inspiration for a poem, and then, instead of being able to plunge right in to create it, having to stop before setting down a single word in order to decide which of your languages to write it in. How can you tell, beforehand, which of them will do most justice to your idea? Well, I should think you cannot. You can rely only on the same spark that gave you your initial impetus: try one and then see. So that poetry, already difficult enough to create in any language, becomes even more difficult, requiring not only the right-on choices of the components of an individual language, but also the fateful choice of which language risks being most propitious. Of course, risk is an operative word in any attempt at creativity, but doubling that risk is surely doubling the hazards of failure. Albert Russo does not fail.

In the twelve poems that follow, each in both an English and French version, I don't know and I don't want to know in which of the two languages Albert Russo wrote some or all of them first and then rewrote them all over again from scratch in the other language. But what I do know - what leaps from the page - is that he has tremendous courage.

Courage to take risks, courage to trust his creative urgings, courage to rely on his multilingualism (in these pages mostly reduced to bilingualism), and even more courage to present his resultant findings to the public. There are fewer of us out here who can read equally well in French as in English than there used to be perhaps, but there are certainly fewer still who can write equally well in both languages, of which Albert Russo is eminently one of the best, and not only in poetry. And I must add that his publishers are courageous, too, for, after all, considerably less than half the book-buying public is bilingual.

As to these bilingual works themselves, the interest in reading how the same original impetus worked itself out in each of the two different languages is self-evidently enormous, and revelatory of the separate qualities of the two. For it has to be said that none of these poems is a translation and still less an adaptation from one tongue into the other. Whichever came first, the English or the French, the other is a refining of the original ore through a different method of smelting. Or, to put it differently, it is like two painters depicting the same rocks at Normandy's Etretat, with their different palettes. For I put it to you that there are two entirely different poets at work here, a French-language one and an English-language one, and they are both named Albert Russo.

It seems to me that Russo's Francophone poetry evokes a musical fragrance that Russo's Anglophone poetry does not. At the same time, however, as though by way of revenge, the latter has a flat no-nonsense directness that aims to say no more and no less than what it intends, and in a species of illuminated nakedness, which is not at all the aim of the former. And yet (here is what is miraculous) both versions pierce down into the foundations of the original vision's truth. Now this, I would submit, is quite an achievement, exemplifying a talent possessing resources way beyond mere bilingualism, especially since, throughout, we are offered the gift of an accurate reflection of the intrinsic genius of the French and English tongues themselves.

One example will suffice to highlight what I mean. In the poem that contains the word Pixel in both titles, here is the end of the fifth stanza in English:

until your office became fitted with computers
and the Asian-made portables followed you
from doorstep to car, from taxi to plane.

I would call this pinpoint verbal accuracy, where the poetry arises not merely through careful choice of vocabulary but considerably more through the quality and accuracy of the images employed, and in any event not through any extracurricular emanation of what is customarily called music.
Here is the equivalent passage in French:

à présent ton bureau est bardé d'ordinateurs
et de gadgets à puces fabriqués
dans l'une des quatre patries où le tigre était roi.

 

I would call this not only music, music that is beyond mere rational sense, but a musical crescendo, where the violins sweep us onwards and upwards until kettledrums pound out the last three words.

It would be futile as well as meaningless to argue which of these vastly different versions is "better". But it has to be said that, provided each version is read several times, alternatively, a certain authorial roundness is achieved through the reader's growing perception of the by-play of Franco-English counterpoint, because (1) each version in its own way says something at once different from and more than the other version says, (2) each version sheds light on what the other does say, and (3) a nuance held secret in the final line of each is fully disclosed in the final line of the other. Most astonishing of all, these paired-off arias (decidedly not duets!) successfully arrive at giving us precisely the same message through their completely different images. What's more, in each case that more or less hidden message would take pages and pages of much-less-effective prose to describe, many times the length of the poem. And yet each poem stands on its own as a solo performance, adamantine.

Now all this, I submit, is dazzling.
Reader, prepare to be dazzled.

 

FRANCAIS

Que ce soit au travers de ses romans, de ses nouvelles ou de ses poèmes, Albert Russo raconte inlassablement l’homme, ses doutes, ses angoisses, ses plaisirs.

Sa poésie est résolument moderne, tout en étant profondément ancrée dans l’histoire. Il y a chez lui une volonté d’appréhender l’être humain dans sa globalité, c’est à dire en tant qu’être collectif et individuel. Sans jamais tomber dans les travers habituels qui veulent que les tenants du collectif oublie l’individuel et vice versa. Il n’est ni un idéologue, ni un nombriliste.

Originale également dans le sens où elle raconte. Toujours. Albert Russo introduit dans sa poésie un sens de la narration assez rare dans le domaine, souvent cantonné à l’introspection. Car, avant tout, il est un raconteur d’histoire, et la poésie, entre ses mains, devient conte, fable, tranche de vie. Entendons-nous bien : je parle bien de poésie. Comme je le signalais en introduction, l’homme est aussi romancier et nouvelliste. Il connaît les différentes formes littéraires, pour les avoir explorées sans relâche depuis son entrée en écriture. Il n’y a donc pas confusion de genre.

Le style est libre – nous sommes dans le domaine de la poésie en prose -, vif, nerveux. Les images puissantes, évocatrices. L’histoire, quelle soit brève ou plus développée, toujours rigoureuse, significative. Jamais gratuite. Elle insuffle cette vie, cette chaleur, cette profondeur, qui émanent des poèmes et caractérisent l’écriture de l’auteur. La langue (les langues, anglais/français, le poète étant bilingue) est généreuse et belle, de cette beauté qui s’épanouit lorsque le travail de l’écrivain a l’élégance, par la grâce du talent, de disparaître au profit de l’œuvre. C’est ce qu’on appelle la maîtrise.

Voici, pour illustrer mon propos, deux poèmes de l’auteur, l’un en français, l’autre en anglais.

 

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Mon nom est Gianni
Mon nom est Jim
Mais aussi Dominique
Dans les deux sens
Et donc dans tous les sens

       Que se soit Gianni, Jim ou Dominique
       Au present comme au passé
       A la première personne ou à la troisième
       Il s'agit de la même personne
       A ceci près que chacune d'entre elles
       Est marquée par le sceau d'une langue
       L'assaut, diront les esprits chagrins

Tantôt Gianni et Jim se confondront
Tantôt ils s'opposeront
Tantôt ils ne se reconnaîtront plus
Et il en sera de même avec les deux Dominique

      Parfois l’écart entre eux sera infime
      Ou alors aussi vaste qu'un océan
      Celui qui sépare les idiomes
      Ou se mesure à la mixité du Sang

 

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

They call me Gianni
They call me Jim
But also Dominic
In both genders
In every guise

       Whether it be Gianni, Jim or Dominic
       In the present tense as in the past
       First or third person
       We're talking of the same person
       With the difference that each one
       Speaks in another tongue
       Confounding strangers
       Claims the spiteful gossip

At times Gianni and Jim will be one and the same
At times they will oppose each other
Sometimes they might act as total strangers
And so it goes for both Dominics

        The distance between them may be paper thin
        Or else wide as the ocean
        That which separates two languages
        Or lies, mute, within the blood cells

 

Ce volume, qui regroupe la quasi totalité des poèmes qu’Albert Russo a publié un peu partout dans le monde est l’affirmation d’une vision humaniste de la société qu’il est urgent, en ces temps de fanatisme, de haine et de destruction, de prendre en compte. En se disant que, toujours, la vie, l’amour et la fraternité l’emporteront. Quant à sa lecture, c’est un régal.

Eric Tessier - La Nef des Fous

 

ENGLISH

OH ZAPERETTA!

 

Albert Russo's hilarious Zapinette series - 475 pages ISBN: 1-4134-7014-9 (Paperback) ISBN: 1-4134-7015-7 (Hardcover)

To order this book: Website: www.xlibris.com - 

Email: Orders@Xlibris.com  

Fax:610-915-0294 - Telephone: 1.888.795.4274 x 276 or 215.923.4686 Mail:Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 USA
You may also order the book through Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Booksamillion, etc, but it will take longer than with Xlibris.

 

THE LITERARY REVIEW: “... Be warned, Zapinette's gems of insouciant wit tend to become infectious. This wise-child's deceptively worldly innocence takes the entire gamut of human endeavor in its compass. Hardly anyone or anything escapes unscathed. Michael Jackson,Vittorio de Sica, Freddy Mercury, Mao Zedong, Bill and Hill, the Pope, Fidel Castro, and even Jesus of Nazareth all come under Zapinette's delightfully zany fire as she "zaps" from topic to topic in an irrepressible flux. As the century of the double zeros dawns, we have seen the future and the future is sham. As a healthy dose of counter-sham, Zapinette Video should be on every brain-functional person's reading list.” Impatient, impertinent, raucous, and often passionate in her opinions (a trait she obviously inherits from her hot-blooded uncle), Zapinette regales us with words we’ve never heard before. Like her mother, she’s a staunch "felinist;" she worries about the "heather-setchuals" who are "VIP positive;" is freaked out by the "Clue Cocks Clan" and the "androidous" Michael Jackson; has read about the English playwright "Shake’em pears;" wishes more people would go see a "sigh-kayak-tryst;" and can’t stand an uppity blue-blood classmate she calls "Charlotte de Jerq." With Zapinette, you will discover Paris, Italy, New York and Belgium and have the ride of your life.

 

 

'WORLD LITERATURE TODAY' (USA): on "ZAPINETTE GOES TO NEW YORK"

 

Albert Russo has managed to avoid the two pitfalls of the writer of sequels, duplication and inflation. The child narrator Zapinette à New York is just as natural as she was in Zapinette Vidéo, but she has grown sightly older. She has gradually come to terms with her femininity and her desires, she no longer feels humiliated at being looked at in the streets, and, at the end of the novel, she is even able to fall in love. In Zapinette Vidéo, she had told her readers that she would never even dream of writing books, now she poses as a writer, basks in her success and asks her readers to keep their eyes open for her (p?ossible) third novel. What Zapinette, and indeed all children, cannot easily get reconciled with is that the adults who love them also tend to love other people or things, which she invariably calls boring or disgusting. Her uncle's love of opera was unbearable to her when they were in Verona, now in New York, what she cannot stand is mainly the people they meet, especially Uncle Albéric's former girlfriends (one is said to have a physique "full of ungratefulness" and a nose like a hangar) and the young men who stare at him in too tender or too explicit a fashion. And then, one day, she finds herself confronted to "her exact copy", in the shape of a boy from Staten Island, with whom she is going to discover the narcissistic pleasure of falling in love, which she called "narcisserie" (a word that surely rhymes with "charcuterie"). She then forgets about her worried mother in Paris and even gives up being her uncle's chaperone in the Big Apple, and indulges in the pleasure of loving and being loved, not only a boy but a whole family and a whole culture. Obviously, the change is too sudden and fresh for her to be able to analyze it, but we, her readers, at the end of Zapinette à New York, simply feel that the aim of her travels was mainly to bring the girl back to her original narcissism, with the difference that now she is able to share it with another person, which is after all what most of us usually call "love".

 

ENGLISH

The Benevolent American in the Heart of Darkness

 
is a trilogy of Albert Russo’s award-winning African novels set in the former Belgian Congo and Rwanda-Urundi. 547 pages
ISBN: 1-4134-7012-2 (Paperback); ISBN: 1-4134-7013-0 (Hardcover)
To order this book: Website: www.xlibris.com - Email: Orders@Xlibris.com  

Fax:610-915-0294 - Telephone: 1.888.795.4274 x 276 or 215.923.4686 Mail:Xlibris Corporation, 2 International Plaza, suite 340 - Philadelphia, PA 19113 USA
You may also order the bookthrough Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Booksamillion, etc, but it will take longer than with Xlibris.

 

“In The Black Ancestor, the reader will find, as in the two other novels, Eclipse over Lake Tanganyika and Mixed Blood or your son Léopold, many poignant and delightful passages, especially in the journeys across the magnificent Kivu province, which today, along with bordering Rwanda and Burundi, has been scarred by fratricidal wars. That Leodine, in the opening novel, happens to be an adolescent, as was Leopold in Mixed Blood, isn’t fortuitous, for it is at that vulnerable period of one’s life that one’s personality takes form. In Albert Russo’s Africa you will find humankind’s infinite diversity and, amid such richness, a quest for the deep self.” Eric Tessier. “Albert Russo has recreated through a young African boy's joys and struggles many of the tensions of modern life, straight and gay, black and white, third world and first ... all of these tensions underlie this story of a biracial child adopted by a benevolent American. Mixed Blood or Your son Leopold is a non-stop, gripping read!" Edmund White. Eclipse over Lake Tanganyika reviewed in World Literature Today. Russo's novel is as interesting and ambiguous as Columbus's journal : every page demonstrates the writer's fascination for the pristine luxuriant Eden-like land and his utter sadness at what havoc men have wreaked on such plentiful beauty: “a décor of papier mâché, which a single spark could incinerate.” Oswald is the Christ of this New African Testament. One scene shows him metaphorically crucified at the hands of his never satisfied lover, who is also, by the way, everyone else's, Damiana Antoniades, the Great Whore of Bujumbura. As the local medic, Oswald performs a few ‘miracles’, but he fails to convert anyone, and finally vanishes with his “plans and ideals”, forsaken in the symbolical flood of a tropical storm, from which he is retrieved by the King of Burundi himself, who was just driving by and handeAd Oswald a towel for him to dry himself with : "AlI of a sudden Oswald fell out-of-place. He had come all the way from America, full of plans and ideaIs, which seemed to have vanished, swept away by the cloudburst and the Mwami’s unexpected appearance." Once Oswald, the symbolical upholder of ideals, is out of the way, Burundi becomes the realm of crooked politicians, disgruntled white trash and killers, who inscribe on the immaculate landscape an Apocalypse of red and black. The metaphorical “eclipse” of the title is the change from an immaculate majestic blackness “carved in ebony” to the blackness of an evil fed and encouraged by the white colonisation of Africa, whose aftermath extends from the Katanga rebellion in the sixties (the time of the novel) to the Rwandan genocide of the nineties. Albert Russo raises then the ultimate question of the effect of colonialism, a political system in which humaneness (love, tolerance and delight in natural beauty) is eventually dissolved into the disheartening racial equality of greed, contempt and murder.

ENGLISH

Eric, my father's lover

“publication in 2009-2010“ 

. 

Review of the original novel published in the author's own French version in two parts: L'AMANT DE MON PERE (Le Nouvel Athanor) and JOURNAL ROMAIN (Editions Hors Commerce and Cercle Poche, Paris, France) Presentation by FRANCE CULTURE, the French National Public Radio. Reviewed in WORLD LITERATURE TODAY - USA

 .

“The readers familiar with Albert Russo’s writings are in for a surprise: his latest novel in French is a postmodern one. After Mr Russo’s sensuous African novels, atmospheric and teeming with local colour, after the gentle caricature of his humorous Zapinette Vidéo, the bilingual writer dons the modernistic costume of the author as puppeteer, relishing in his own power to lose his readers within a glass maze in which, at the end of the journey, they only gaze down at the ‘mise en abyme’ of themselves. Frank, the hero of L’Amant de mon père (My Father's Lover) is the archetypal one. He is a handsome young man of extensive means, the only heir of a garment industry fortune, who has sailed smoothly through an easy life in an exclusive area of Paris, and, besides, can boast of two unmistakable assets on the threshold of adult life in bourgeois Paris: a lovely girl-friend and a degree in computer science. But one day, Frank finds some letters of his father's, written to a male lover, and an old photograph of his father and the man. Then, Frank's steady comfortable life topples down. The discovery takes place on page 1; Albert Russo then offers us a few lines of doubt and half-hearted hesitation, and straight after, launches into a cat and mouse game with his readers, often bordering on farce or caricature, but always subtly beside or beyond them. Trying to summarize the rest of the plot would be too long and no doubt pointless; two examples of unexpected and incongruous situations will suffice. On learning about the homosexual affair, Frank falls under the spell of his father’s still unknown lover and then meets him, a much older but still quite attractive man. He follows him into a Paris department store, where the two indulge in a mutual game of seduction, in which Eric, the older man, acts the sales clerk, piles trendy clothes onto Frank and leaves him with his business card and the bill to pay! Much later in the novel Frank's mother poisons her husband in a scene fraught with sensuousness and malaise around a feast of... red berry herbal tea. Mr Russo loves unsettling us, verging on the caricature or the burlesque, but never quite giving way to them. In the meantime, Frank has become Eric’s lover. In the homorous affair which develops, Albert Russo manages to show us Frank's predicament. The young man is neither gay nor straight but simply looking for someone other than the man or woman he holds in his arms, the father he could not love because of his mother's overbearingness or the mother he could not love either because loving her meant giving himself up. In L’Amant de mon père, love is a merry-go- round none of the characters can escape.”

 .

John Shepley, American author and translator of Italo Calvino and Leonardo Sciacia, among other contemporary Italian and French writers.

.

"I liked L’AMANT DE MON PERE very much. Your novel carried me along by the strength of its plot and characters. Incidents were resolved by the sense of inevitability that you managed to convey. I wondered about the close of the novel, where the characters and outcome are dismissed in two brief sentences. And yet even that works. In short, the novel creates its own terms and then lives up to them".

 

" L´AMANT DE MON PÈRE - JOURNAL ROMAIN. Albert Russo.144 pages - 13 euros - Editions Hors Commerce, Paris, 2003 - ISBN: 2-910-599-97-3

 

‘L’Amant de mon père’ (My father’s lover): the words struck and the story kept its promise. That title had a taste of sulphur, since in French, ‘amant’ can only be masculine. But it’s not enough to sound provocative, there must be substance. This is what Albert Russo gives us again with ‘L’Amant de mon père - journal romain’, which is the sequel to ‘L’Amant de mon père’. In literature as in love, some stories aren’t terminated just with the word End, they follow their own path, with twists and turns that sometimes look like quirks of fate. This sequel was above all a request from the readers of ‘L’Amant de mon père’, which has gone into its third printing in France and appeared in 2002 in an Italian translation. At this point of the story, we encounter a distraught Eric Wangermée, overwhelmed by the fatal convergence of events in which love and death intertwine, resulting in the destruction of several lives, after the murder of the son and the father, the latter having been diabolically fomented by the young man’s mother, with the help of her boyfriend. Both murders were attributed to Eric Wangermée, the lover of the two unfortunate men. Acquitted, after an 18-month incarceration, Eric Wangermée is freed. Freed but broken. His is but an appearance of freedom, for the society he now faces is fraught with malice and prejudice. Can a homosexual ever redeem himself? Wasn’t there some truth in the accusations formulated against him? Even though Justice has cleared Eric Wangermée of the two murder charges, he is now being watched by his peers and his former detractors with fierce attention, as if the proven innocence of a homosexual was more difficult to bear than the guilt of a ‘bona fide’ straight assassin. In spite of the new laws, recognizing the basic rights of gays and lesbians in France, the age-old debate between the implicit legitimacy of heterosexuality and the socially fuzzy status of the homosexual, goes on. The reactions may be subtler in certain quarters, yet brutality is never far away and gay bashers are on the prowl, and not only in the provinces. Recently, a couple of gay men were found murdered in a public garden along the Seine, not far from the new Bibliothèque de France, in the heart of the capital. Then too, there are some disturbing statistics: four times as many gay adolescents attempt suicide as young heterosexuals. There will always be, it seems, a certain malaise, if not outright intolerance, within the family, in schools, as well as at the workplace, towards homosexuals, especially if they have had the courage of coming out. One cannot cancel two thousand years of religious taboo in one or even two generations. With that veil of opprobrium still hanging over him, Eric Wangermée decides to leave France and to settle in Rome. This change of setting is like a survival kit. In his new surroundings, he will breathe a different air, make new discoveries, face new people, learn to speak another language. All this will help put some balm over his wounds, if not regenerate him. This is not to say that his pain has been erased, its memory will always linger in the back of his mind, but his new Roman preoccupations will act as a sort of catharsis. Eric Wangermée is overwhelmed by the beauty of the Eternal City, its historical verticality, as much as he is taken by the humdrum of everyday life, by all the little things he has to learn in order to make himself comfortable in it. He is thrust upon the proscenium of Italian life, when not upon the stage itself, with the feeling that he can be part of that long and uninterrupted history which stretches from Petronius to Fellini and now to Roberto Begnini. Fortuitously, he will encounter a trio of gay musketeers, towards whom he will act as their d’Artagnan: Sven, the Swede, Menelik, the young Ethiopian and Alfiero, the Roman. In this ménage à trois which, after many a procrastination and, at times, painstaking reassessment of each other’s roles, has found an equilibrium between love, tolerance and jealousy, he will land like a tsunami on foreign shores. The erotic romps which Albert Russo describes with a rare verve and indeed voltairian buoyancy, using a language at once raw and sensual, never vulgar, inflame the senses of his protagonists, reigniting dormant passions while at the same time, turning around the tables and casting new roles. Sven, who had suffered so much from Menelik’s intrusion into Alfiero’s life and who, thanks to the persistant efforts, the patience and the generosity of his Italian lover, had finally accepted to take his place in this unconventional triangle, to the point where he became the staunchest defender of the young Ethiopian, is metamorphosed by the sudden arrival of Eric in their midst. He’s totally besotted with the Frenchman and this unexpected turn of events reshuffle the cards of the triangle. The magic of love has played once again havoc with the fate of these men, breaking the harmony of their much admired and sometimes envied setup. Then the question arises as to the durability of happiness. Is passion thus necessarily distructive and to what degree does this poison act as a snuffer? If I have used the word ‘erotic’ above, it isn’t fortuitous, for eroticism plays an important part in this novel, in particular, as well as in Albert Russo’s fiction in general. Simply because it belongs to life and to its pleasures. This reminds me of a conversation I had with the author, in which he told me that someone reproached him for having introduced explicit sex in a text he deemed of a ‘serious’ nature. Apparently that person could not reconcile the fact that ‘serious’ thoughts could be followed, within the same pages, by the description of the sexual act. And why indeed, may I ask, would they have to exclude each other? Is the impact of one’s reflective thoughts diminished in any way, the instant one slides into bed with a partner? I think not! So, let’s get to the crux of the matter and have a peek at some of the the book’s sizzling scenes, which could very well fit in a contemporary anthology of eroticism. After a scrumptious dinner, washed down by generous servings of Lambrusco wine and digestive liqueurs, Sven invites our hero to join him in their private sauna cabin and a befuddled Eric is drawn into a the heights of sensuality; befuddled is the word, for our hero who considers the three musketeers as his saviors, never contemplated having sex with any of the men, still haunted as he is by his recent tragedy. Here a parallel can be drawn between the delights of the table and those of flesh. The comparison may be a cliché, but if you read the pages Albert Russo dedicates to these pleasures, you will certainly agree with me that they are indeed pieces of anthology and that they are not strangers to each other. In both cases, he writes as an aesthete and invites us to join him to the feast, knowingly. His descriptions of physical love are as explicit as they are sensual. He is never crude and never does he fall into the mediocrity of those pitiful orgies one finds in the so-called erotic novels that purport to imitate real life. In Albert Russo’s work, the human side always prevails, whatever the circumstances. Which, think of it, is quite subversive in itself, and far more interesting. Eric Tessier

FRANCAIS

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