A mixture of modesty and violence, Un perdant magnifique is the portrait of a very special person, as monstrous as he is irresistible.
At the heart of a disintegrating family, the atypical father-in-law seizes all the attention. A mythomaniac, spendthrift, capricious, suicidal, generous, elegant, homeless, sincere, liar, enthusiastic, and depressive, Jacques is all of these. Between France and the Ivory Coast, he drags the narrator, her sister Irène, and their mother into a whirlwind that ultimately destroys him.
Florence Seyvos has always been haunted by this mysterious and toxic character. In Un perdant magnifique, she has never come so close to the truth—a painful truth she conveys with her signature blend of restraint and intensity. As in Le Garçon incassable, her greatest success to date, she offers a precise, sometimes cruel, portrayal of every situation, yet with infinite delicacy.
