The Samurai

by Julia Kristeva, Barbara Bray (Translator)

A portrait of Parisian intellectuals of the 1960s as seen through the eyes of Olga, a young Eastern European who comes to Paris to write a literary thesis, and finds herself immediately swept into the world of a group of young leftist thinkers and writers known as the Samurai.

Genres: Fiction

341 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1990

About the author

Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII and author of many acclaimed works. Her Columbia University Press books include Hatred and Forgiveness (2012); The Severed Head: Capital Visions (2014); and, with Philippe Sollers, Marriage as a Fine Art (2016).

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite how much as I love Kristeva as a theorist, I cannot say I loved this novel at all. Though clad in the wrappings of fiction, the novel's plot and characters are based directly on Kristeva's own years as a graduate student and post-doc in Paris and is useful to scholars interested in her life and work for this reason, but the writing is simply not up to what you'd expect from a highly-intelligent author who is also an astute reader and critic of Proust. None of the affection for complex detail and nearly dream-like word-craft that Kristeva admires in Proust and other writers appears in this novel, despite Kristeva's ability to explicate and critique some of the world's greatest literature. While Hélène Cixous has her own faults as a writer of fiction, I feel she far outshines Kristeva's efforts here. For that matter Kristeva's other ventures into fiction have not much impressed me, either.

To ensure the translation wasn't at fault, I picked up the French original and can say it was just as uninspired. I will gladly read anything in the way of criticism Kristeva writes, but probably no more of her fiction . . . which is thinly disguised non-fiction in any event.

[Evi Kourti · Rating 1 out of 5]

“Read” is an overstatement, as I abandoned ship on the 112th page. This novel managed to somehow make me feel like I was expecting to feel about Simone de Beauvoir’s novels before ever getting my hands on one: a -somehow very intensely sexist- unilateral view of feminism, women’s must and must nots, once again dictated by and serving ultimately men. Only now, it’s men who we admire, on account of them being… rich, older, annoyingly eloquent and emotionally unavailable? I was thankfully wrong about SdB, but this one granted me the full experience. I don’t know if it gets better on the way, but this book not only bored me, it also annoyed me. The protagonist seems to only ponder internally, and all the reflections on her political and national background seem to be done by men who all fit the aforementioned description. The only thing keeping me going was the hope of some type of redemption arc, but I don’t think this is what we’re getting.

[Blaze-Pascal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Les souvenirs d'une jeune intellectuelle qui a déménagé à Paris juste avant les grands événements de Mai 68. Elle esquisse l'air de ce qu'était important pour eux. Des samouraïs avec des plumes, des idées, du langage. Tout le monde a un nouveau nom, et le fun de le livre est de reconnaître de qui ces personnages sont. Lauzun, le gourou de Paris, est bien sûr Lacan. Brehal, c'est Barthes. Sinteuil est Sollers. Je pense.

Après avoir lu le biographie intellectuelle de Kristeva, j'étais déjà familiarisé avec quelque époques dans sa vie. La voyage en Chine, ses travailles en New York, et la naissance de son fils. Pour ce raison, j'ai apprecié le livre beaucoup. Et c'était aussi un bon raison pour pratiquer mon français.

Je pense que je lirai plus de livre de Kristeva dans la futur.

[Kit · Rating 1 out of 5]

Proving that great literary theorists can write novels just as trite as anyone else's. "You're so beautiful when you're angry." "He exploded inside her." Blech.

[T.D. Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll admit that I adore a good novel about academic life, as many English majors who've gone on to other things tend to do. And a novel that promises a view into a historical moment--particularly one relevant to my studies--is one I can't miss. Thus, I had to read Julia Kristeva's The Samurai, a novel written by a preeminent theorist that includes fictionalized portraits of her contemporary intellectuals. While the novel lived up to its promise, the view into the world was one of the sensual and exalted world in which the characters lived, but it lacked something of the human ordinariness that even the most elite experience. I'd recommend this for readers interested in the milieu, but I'll add the caveat that, as a novel, the work left me cold.

[castral · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel was written as only by someone with a profound passion for language can write.

The symbology, irony, rhetoric, psychology, and intertextual connections run deeply through every page. You don't need to be a linguist or psychologist to understand the story but familiarity with many of their concepts will help immensely in appreciating this masterwork.

This is the ultimate sapiosexual love story.

[Asma Djezzar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Il n y a plus d'histoires d'amour .pourtant les femmes les désirent et les hommes aussi .
C'est la premier phrase du roman ou la formule d'ouverture choisi par Julia krstiva tant que romancière qui raconte son histoire cachée sous le nom de Olga la jeune fille venue de la Romanie vers la France pour une quête qui se varie entre l'amour ,l'amitié ,le mérite et le vrai sens des relation humaines dans l'ere poste modernisme.

[Francesco Infussi]

Intellettuali francesi anni sessanta e settanta, tutti, ma proprio tutti quelli che contano.
Un romanzo a chiave dove compaiono tutti con altri nomi.
(la versione seria del libro di Binet: "La settima funzione del linguaggio")
Cronologicamente il "seguito" del libro di Simon de Beauvoir "I mandarini".

Autobiografico (o quasi)
Traduzione di Oreste del Buono e Lietta Tornabuoni (che coppia!)