The Inner Harbour

by Antoine Volodine, Gina M. Stamm (Translator)

A beguiling, perspective-shifting story of obsession and loss set in the grimy, late-colonial decadence of Macau at the end of the twentieth century
 

In The Inner Harbour, Antoine Volodine focuses his literary investigations away from dystopian futures to a specific place at a particular historical Macau on the eve of the Portuguese colony’s transfer to China. In a seedy flat in one of the city’s slums, a hired assassin named Kotter interrogates Breughel, a writer on the run from a mysterious organization code-named Paradise. Breughel has been hiding out in Macau with his lover, Gloria Vancouver, and a significant sum of the organization’s money. But Gloria is dead and the money spent—or so Breughel claims—and now he lives alone in humid squalor.

 

With increasing severity, Kotter extracts Breughel’s confessions, but are they truth or subterfuge? Or are the confessions an elaborate work of fiction by a writer aware that they are no longer able to differentiate between memory and fantasy? Volodine brilliantly blurs the levels of narration—between what Breughel tells his interrogator, what he remembers or invents, and the stories he has written, including his accounts of Gloria’s hallucinatory visions of an apocalyptic war between military forces and the “chrysalids.”

 

Interweaving threads of fiction and truth, lies and hallucinations, The Inner Harbour evokes many of the themes found in Volodine’s other “post-exotic” the slippage between dreams and reality, the nightmares of history, the exhaustion of literature and politics, and questions about what it means to be faithful to people or ideas long since vanished. But Volodine also uses the setting of Macau’s late-colonial decadence to explore new sensations of foreignness, alienation, and resignation, all of which coalesce into a nesting doll of narrative that houses an unconventional and tragic love story.

Genres: Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Antoine Volodine is the primary pseudonym of a French author. Some of his books have been published in sf collections, but his style, which he has called "post-exoticism", does not fit neatly into any common genre.

He publishes under several additional pseudonyms, including Lutz Bassmann and Manuela Draeger.

Reviews

[endrju]

The Inner Harbour reads like an aberrant spawn of Wong Kar-Wai's 2046, David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch, and João Pedro Rodrigues and João Rui Guerra da Mata's A Última Vez Que Vi Macau. If you're familiar with Volodine’s "post-exotic" oeuvre, you’ll know to expect a distant, post-apocalyptic future—a perpetual endtimes in which nothing truly ends but continues to dissolve into not an eternity but a really long duration. Surprisingly for Volodine, this one is quite clearly dated to just before Macau rejoined the People's Republic of China after centuries as a Portuguese colony. That doesn't mean it lacks his signature "post-exotic" apocalypticism; rather, it manifests as a schizo-paranoid fiction within fiction, spliced with hard-boiled (neon) noir. A marvelous surprise from Volodine.

[Daniel Grenier · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mon premier Volodine, publié en 1995. Ce ne sera pas le dernier, même si pour l’instant j’ai plutôt l’impression d’avoir lu un roman typique des Éditions de Minuit que celui d’un auteur avec une voix singulière.

[KDub · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 🌟 rounded down

The Inner Harbour by Antoine Volodine is one of the most unique books I’ve read. I had a hard time rating it and needed a few days to process it. Frankly, my mind is still reeling from this one.

This is not what I would consider an easy read. Its length, a mere 160 pages, suggests otherwise. But the way it's written, I had to read it in small chunks over a couple of weeks. Normally, a book this size would take me one evening to read. There are run-on sentences (some lasting several pages), the dialogue lacks quotation marks, the story is nonlinear, and it switches between 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person without warning. Some sentences are even left unfinished, missing the last noun, and the reader is left to fill in the blank themselves. Apparently, this is common for Volodine’s “post-exotic” work, a genre concept I’m still trying to wrap my head around. It’s not a book everyone will necessarily enjoy.

However, I felt that all these writing techniques (if you can call them that) were used to add to the story's mystery. The main character, Breughel, is an author. So often, it’s hard to tell if what Breughel is saying/thinking is reality, a dream, or something he made up for a book. Besides, with the lack of quotes, it was sometimes hard to tell if he was saying these things out loud or if they were just thoughts in his head, anyway. All of it lends to a maddening, fever-dream state of a book. It was a compelling, yet frustrating experience. However, I still really enjoyed the story overall and would consider reading Volodine’s other works. It’s just not something I could do regularly. Many times, I just want a straightforward plot and conclusion.

Who would I recommend this for? That’s a good question. I’d recommend it if you want to read something challenging that makes you question the narrator's reality and reliability. And if you can embrace the unique writing style, it’s truly a fascinating book.

Thank you to NetGalley and University of Minnesota Press for the eARC.

[Julien Ligne 4 · Rating 5 out of 5]

How much Volodine is translated in English? Y’all motherfuckers need to read this.

[Mandy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This original and frankly discombobulating short novel is set in Macau during the late colonial era just before the Portuguese handover to China. In a squalid apartment in one of the city’s slums, a hired assassin called Kotter interrogates Breughel in order to extract details of a woman called Gloria and a mysterious unnamed organisation. That all sounds straightforward enough – but unfortunately the book is anything but straightforward. The shifting points of view, the shift between 1st, 2nd and 3rd person and the unreliable narrator and narration makes this a challenging read, all too challenging for me as I wasn’t invested enough to make the considerable effort needed to try to understand what was going on. The author blurs the boundaries between memory, fantasy, lies, fabrication and illusion leading to an unsettling reading experience. I can quite see that many readers will enjoy this, but I didn’t, it’s just not the sort of book I enjoy. It’s called a “post-exotic” novel, a term which is often applied to Volodine’s writing, and is apparently a genre blending approach and I admit to not fully understanding what is meant. However, I’m glad to have discovered this author and maybe I will try again at some point.

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The shifting between first, second, and third person narration as well as the shifting narrator combine with the claustrophobic setting to create a disorientating reading experience. Breughel's unreliable narrative blends with his fictions and his mannerisms, most notably the unfinished sentences, bleed into the Kotter sections making it impossible for the reader to know what to trust. Much of the first half takes place in Breughel's apartment, but the plot ramps up pretty quickly in the second half. Both in the fiction and logbook sections.

This is the first of Volodine's novels that I have read and I wasn't quite sure what to expect with the "post-exotic" descriptor, but I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of his backlist in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and Univ Of Minnesota Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Jamie Barringer (Ravenmount) · Rating 4 out of 5]

An author imagines himself an adventure involving a field agent who has found him out and is looking for his accomplices... or, a field agent tracks down a man involved with several persons of interest, or maybe something else is really going on. Maybe one or more of the people involved is deceased, or fiction, or insane... All we really know is that a man in Macau is being interrogated about the whereabouts of a woman named Gloria, though that interrogation may be a dream or part of a novel. Fans of Murakami, Ishiguro, Kafka, or Ali Smith may really enjoy this short novel, with its dreamlike storytelling and fluid, ambiguous narrative.

[Jean-charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

J'ai beaucoup aimé. Vous avez trois jours à passer chez votre mère et vous aimez les mises en abyme, mais plutôt celles que publie Minuit? Oyez!

Carnet de bord : Breughel est en cavale à Macao, en déréliction loin de la vengeance du Paradis, une organisation de barbouzes à qui il a volé, mais qui un jour finira par réclamer des comptes sous la forme de Kotter, un tueur. Lui, ou un autre, le trouvera à 22°16’ de latitude Nord et 113°35’ de longitude Est.

Dialogue : attaché par Kotter à une chaise pour un interrogatoire - figure typique du post-exotisme, on se fait interroger - Breughel est un narrateur peu fiable. Sauf pour protéger Gloria, son amour sombrée dans la folie depuis, mais morte annonce-t-il à Kotter. Et il ne finit pas ses phrases de peur que. Ou parce que le lecteur les finit pour lui s'il. Claustration mentale aussi.

Flash-back : non seulement il a roulé le Paradis, mais encore il a séduit Victoria, son agente venue pour le séduire. Désordre. Autant que le taudis dans lequel il est maintenant soumis à la question. Il rêve, et c'est très onirique puisque des « épaves somnambuliques de la guerre noire » regrettent d'y avoir survécu, et l'amitié disparue. Chacun est seul avec « la honte d'être ».

Monologue intérieur : l'interrogé, ignoré par la population car barbare blanc illettré, raconte du pipeau mais il aime l'opéra cantonais... sa chemise lui colle à la peau, les idéogrammes lentement déchiffrés, voire pas du tout, lui filent entre les doigts. Sa compagne d'exil, esprit en fuite dans un univers parallèle de guerre civile paroxystique, lui inspire des carnets d'une prose troublée et auto-phagocyte. Il les a préparés pour la visite anticipée de Kotter. Il vit dans un capharnaüm, y a disséminé les fausses pistes, au fond d'une venelle au mieux embourbée, sans doute en putréfaction elle aussi, comme Gloria, comme lui.

Kotter existe-t-il à l'extérieur de la tête malade de Breughel? Qu'est-ce qui est vrai à part cette solitude?

[Meghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The shifting between first, second, and third person narration as well as the shifting narrator combine with the claustrophobic setting to create a disorientating reading experience. Breughel's unreliable narrative blends with his fictions and his mannerisms, most notably the unfinished sentences, bleed into the Kotter sections making it impossible for the reader to know what to trust. Much of the first half takes place in Breughel's apartment, but the plot ramps up pretty quickly in the second half. Both in the fiction and logbook sections.

This is the first of Volodine's novels that I have read and I wasn't quite sure what to expect with the "post-exotic" descriptor, but I really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more of his backlist in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley and Univ Of Minnesota Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Mahinder Kingra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the galleys of the forthcoming English-language translation. Inspired by spy novels and post(-modern)-Alain Robbe-Grillet detective fiction, this slim, evocative, and literary novella effectively recreates post-colonial Macau on the eve of its transfer to China. The battle of wits and will between a self-exiled writer and an assassin sent to find his lover is played out in dreamlike fashion amidst the heat, humidity, noise, and garbage of the city’s slums.

[Sjonni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un tueur à gage du Paradis débarque à Macau pour retrouver deux agents en fuite.