In Manuela Draeger’s poetic “post-exotic” novel, a group of young leftists trapped in a burning building after one year’s Bolcho Pride parade plunge back into their childhood memories, trading them with each other as their lives are engulfed in flames. They remember Granny Holgolde’s stories of the elephant Marta Ashkarot, who travels through the Bardo to find her home and be reincarnated again and again. They remember the Soviet folk singer Lyudmila Zykina and her melancholic, simple songs of unspeakable beauty. They remember the half-human birds Granny Holgolde called strange cormorants, the ones who knew how to live in fire, secrecy, and death, and as the flames grow they hope to become them.

Draeger, a heteronym for the acclaimed French writer Antoine Volodine, and a librarian in a dystopic prison camp, gives post-exoticism an element of tenderness, and a sense of nostalgia for children’s tales that is far less visible in the other post-exotic works. Eleven Sooty Dreams is her first book written for adults, a moving story of the constancy of brotherly, loving faithfulness.

Translated from the French by J. T. Mahany

'Draeger explores the power of dreams, the potential landscape of the afterlife, and a surreal world populated by characters who can transform, live forever, and alter their states of consciousness. . . . Translator J. T. Mahany channels the soot, despair, revolutionary zeal, and incorruptible love in his powerful translation, allowing anglophone readers to delve deeper into the unique post-exotic world of Volodine and Friends.' —Rachel Cordasco, World Literature Today

Manuela Draeger is one of French author Antoine Volodine’s numerous heteronyms belonging to a community of imaginary authors that includes Lutz Bassmann and Elli Kronauer. Since 2002, she has regularly published novels for adolescents with L’école des loisirs. Eleven Sooty Dreams is her second book to be translated into English.

Open Letter Books, 2021, 150pages.