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Bardo or Not Bardo
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165 pages, Paperback
First published August 28, 2004
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About the author
Antoine Volodine
36 books165 followersAntoine 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.
He publishes under several additional pseudonyms, including Lutz Bassmann and Manuela Draeger.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
February 18, 2022
Volodine has become one of my favorite working writers over the last year or so. I’ve read three of his books so far, and strongly recommend to anyone the adventure of entering into his complex project. It’s a hard project to grasp, consisting of multiple heteronyms and pseudonyms, and an imagined multi dimensional universe grounded in a dystopic future. For all that, these aren’t really science fiction books, exactly; they are difficult to summarize, which is part of their charm; and yet they are quite readable, offering pleasure on every page. Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven has been called the best entry point, and that’s probably true, but, in my experience, you can’t go wrong. A writer of many powers and magnetic properties.
December 29, 2016
Oh great, yet another novella of linked stories that mixes apocalyptic revolutionary politics and esoteric Tibetan mythology around a witty, Beckettian sense of bemusement at the funny weird violent sexy sweet tragedy of human existence. The gall of this Volodine fellow, to think that there's any kind of stories left to tell about socialist secret agent monks hunting each other through dreamworlds and contemplating the mysteries of a pointless death in an absurd world. Is there anything original left to say within that exhausted genre? I doubt it.
And no doubt this whole "Post-Exociticism" thing is nothing more than a hack's careerist scheming for the inevitable movie deals. Everything has to be a series now; gone are the days when an author might erect an elaborate metafictional schema of phony lit-crit, irrational philosophy, and an army of heteronymous authors for a single book and leave well enough alone after that. Is anybody else ready for 49 movies set in the Post-Exoticism Extended Universe assaulting our theaters every six months? Is originality dead in literature? Can't we get novels about something new, like a sad, middle-class white woman who doesn't like her mother?
And no doubt this whole "Post-Exociticism" thing is nothing more than a hack's careerist scheming for the inevitable movie deals. Everything has to be a series now; gone are the days when an author might erect an elaborate metafictional schema of phony lit-crit, irrational philosophy, and an army of heteronymous authors for a single book and leave well enough alone after that. Is anybody else ready for 49 movies set in the Post-Exoticism Extended Universe assaulting our theaters every six months? Is originality dead in literature? Can't we get novels about something new, like a sad, middle-class white woman who doesn't like her mother?
November 18, 2018
The credo behind the crowd which is Antoine Volodine states that the post-exotic effect of literature is the dreams one has after finishing the reading of a novel. Based on that metric, the subconscious effect elevated the experience.
This novel in stories depicts a bleak future, where corruption and revolutionary failure has driven many to Buddhism. All the protagonists find themselves in the Bardo state between death and rebirth. That element is certainly difficult for this reader to swallow.
Volodine uses some interesting elements, bricolage, improvised technology, and even the dire image of someone reading an anarchist tract aloud to direct a fallen comrade in the afterlife.
There is a layer of humor but it appears to be a result of the pervasive disorientation which everyone feels in that between state.
This novel in stories depicts a bleak future, where corruption and revolutionary failure has driven many to Buddhism. All the protagonists find themselves in the Bardo state between death and rebirth. That element is certainly difficult for this reader to swallow.
Volodine uses some interesting elements, bricolage, improvised technology, and even the dire image of someone reading an anarchist tract aloud to direct a fallen comrade in the afterlife.
There is a layer of humor but it appears to be a result of the pervasive disorientation which everyone feels in that between state.
December 25, 2015
as a neophyte in post-exotic volodinia, i'm still finding my bearings (much as those newly arrived in the bardo might do). for the fellow uninitiated, volodine's two-part essay in the new inquiry is essential reading. the pseudonymous/heteronymous french writer has set out for himself the ambitious task of creating an entire literary universe (a la pessoa via oulipo) and the story of said ambition is as compelling as his fiction is intriguing.
bardo or not bardo is a tragicomic take on fate, confusion, and the confusing fate that is the intermediate state between life and reincarnation. in seven shortish vignettes, the french writer mingles humor with equal parts loneliness and bewilderment. his characters, condemned though they are to absurd (and sometimes willful) miscommunication, each inhabit the borderlands preceding their next life (likely doomed to do so ad infinitum). volodine is an enigmatic writer and, as his post-exotic manifesto makes clear, a singular star burning far brighter than the dull, lifeless also-rans which proliferate throughout our contemporary literary universe. his gravity is quite nearly ineluctable, but who needs escape velocity when the environs are so alluring?
*translated from the french by j. t. mahany (volodine's post-exoticism in ten lessons, lesson eleven)
bardo or not bardo is a tragicomic take on fate, confusion, and the confusing fate that is the intermediate state between life and reincarnation. in seven shortish vignettes, the french writer mingles humor with equal parts loneliness and bewilderment. his characters, condemned though they are to absurd (and sometimes willful) miscommunication, each inhabit the borderlands preceding their next life (likely doomed to do so ad infinitum). volodine is an enigmatic writer and, as his post-exotic manifesto makes clear, a singular star burning far brighter than the dull, lifeless also-rans which proliferate throughout our contemporary literary universe. his gravity is quite nearly ineluctable, but who needs escape velocity when the environs are so alluring?
"listen to me with all your strength, noble son," the officiant says." (gong.) "soon you will have been walking for seven weeks. you are going to reach the journey's end." (gong.) "soon you will see males and females in union. you will feel a deep sympathy for them, a violent sympathy. you will be attracted to the notion of quickly entering a seed." (gong.) "you will want to be created by a father and a mother." (gong.) "now focus your attention on what i am saying, glouchenko." (gong.) "do not let yourself be placed in any random embryo. act with discernment. if you give yourself over to your sympathies or random chance, you risk being reincarnated as a miserable beast. you might wake up as a cockroach or a snake, or even a yak, constantly soiled by its own dung. that would be foolish, glouchenko." (gong.) "but all the same, you were a human being in your past existence."
*translated from the french by j. t. mahany (volodine's post-exoticism in ten lessons, lesson eleven)
August 6, 2013
(Je demande d'abord pardon aux lecteurs francophones, car cette critique sera en anglais.)
To say "this is a book about death" feels trite. Most or at least many books about death focus on the emotional aftermath from the perspective of the survivors. When the deceased's point-of-view is included, it is usually laden with pathos, looking back into the world of the quick to observe the survivors' emotional aftermath and ruminate on things left undone. Closure is usually eventually reached.
Not so in Bardo or Not Bardo. It is a book about death, yes. It is a book about passing on, feasibly. But like any post-exotic work, the novel is steeped in a sense of failure. In other works the failure might be melancholy or bitter or fatalistic, but here it is touched by the humorous. The defunct never follow the advice of the lamas reading to them from the Bardo Thödol. One man takes a liking to the empty space of the Bardo and decides to stay there, denying both rebirth and Nirvana. Another man doesn't realize he's dead at all and is convinced his friends have just locked him a very dark room. A woman interrupts the pre-recorded reading to one corpse when she recognizes him as her rapist and gives him bad advice instead, hoping to torture him in the afterlife.
Though humor pervades the book, it is certainly not the only emotion conveyed. It's hard not to feel bad for Bogdan Schlumm when no one shows up to the plays he puts on, the ending to the chapter entitled "Dadokian" could be called nothing short of horrifying, and the final chapter, "Au Bar du Bardo", is really quite touching. Even when Volodine's characters are patently inhuman, their humanity is palpable.
I think that's a good thing to say about this book. The characters' humanity is palpable. Nothing works out right for them. It's both comic and tragic. Like Quim Monzó's A Thousand Morons but somehow both more and less absurd at the same time. Absurd in the Kierkegaardian or Camusian sense. The lamas have absurd faith in an afterlife that through the narrative seems not to exist. The dead are absurd in their stubborn passions and refusal, either ignorant or conscious, to go along with the prescribed post-mortem rules.
This book is absurd and lovely. I can imagine it being whispered and passed around by the post-exotic authors in their eternal prison, comforting them as they die.
To say "this is a book about death" feels trite. Most or at least many books about death focus on the emotional aftermath from the perspective of the survivors. When the deceased's point-of-view is included, it is usually laden with pathos, looking back into the world of the quick to observe the survivors' emotional aftermath and ruminate on things left undone. Closure is usually eventually reached.
Not so in Bardo or Not Bardo. It is a book about death, yes. It is a book about passing on, feasibly. But like any post-exotic work, the novel is steeped in a sense of failure. In other works the failure might be melancholy or bitter or fatalistic, but here it is touched by the humorous. The defunct never follow the advice of the lamas reading to them from the Bardo Thödol. One man takes a liking to the empty space of the Bardo and decides to stay there, denying both rebirth and Nirvana. Another man doesn't realize he's dead at all and is convinced his friends have just locked him a very dark room. A woman interrupts the pre-recorded reading to one corpse when she recognizes him as her rapist and gives him bad advice instead, hoping to torture him in the afterlife.
Though humor pervades the book, it is certainly not the only emotion conveyed. It's hard not to feel bad for Bogdan Schlumm when no one shows up to the plays he puts on, the ending to the chapter entitled "Dadokian" could be called nothing short of horrifying, and the final chapter, "Au Bar du Bardo", is really quite touching. Even when Volodine's characters are patently inhuman, their humanity is palpable.
I think that's a good thing to say about this book. The characters' humanity is palpable. Nothing works out right for them. It's both comic and tragic. Like Quim Monzó's A Thousand Morons but somehow both more and less absurd at the same time. Absurd in the Kierkegaardian or Camusian sense. The lamas have absurd faith in an afterlife that through the narrative seems not to exist. The dead are absurd in their stubborn passions and refusal, either ignorant or conscious, to go along with the prescribed post-mortem rules.
This book is absurd and lovely. I can imagine it being whispered and passed around by the post-exotic authors in their eternal prison, comforting them as they die.
July 15, 2016
Hitherto the word Bardo conjured up either
• a museum in Tunisia that suffered a barbaric uncivilised terrorist attack or
• an iconic French actress whose name is forever associated with St Tropez
I had forgotten about that other realm contained within the Tibetan Book of the Dead - in which the deceased have 49 days in limbo before rebirth. This is the strange void where the 7 connected stories in this book take place.
There are several things that attracted me to this book
1. Its brevity. 165 pages split into 7 separate chunks.
2. It's French.
3. I've never encountered a book by this author translated into English
4. The cover is cool
5. It's published by Open Letter which is part of the University of Rochester (in America and not Kent)
6. It contains words such as vaticination fuliginous Pulverulent tegenaria carceral
Highly entertaining surreal hilarious in places and a book I shall definitely read again.
Recommended to all other fans of short books translated from French into English with cool covers.
A perfect antidote to those (yawn)best sellers.
October 5, 2024
Antoine Volodine’s Bardo or Not Bardo (translated by J.T. Mahany) is another book for the “what the fuck did I just read?” files. The summary on Goodreads makes sense: seven chapters show seven different characters (many of them named Schlumm) fail to achieve enlightenment while traveling through bardo and end up being reincarnated back on earth. I was initially attracted to this book because the review I read said this book was a humorous take on characters struggling in bardo; I was hoping for something a bit like Christopher Moore’s A Dirty Job or Secondhand Souls. This book is nothing like Moore’s work. It’s too weird and disjointed for comfortable reading. There were some parts that made me chuckle, but mostly this book just bewildered me.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
December 1, 2021
The writer Volodine is a new discovery for me, and learning that he goes by a multitude of pen names with a prolific output, much of it not available in English translation.
Storywise, Beckett-like characters in this entertaining work encounter the Bardo under circumstances unpredictable. I would not call these particularly funny and certainly not magical realism, so perhaps post-exotic is a most fitting label. Robert Thurman’s translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Liberation Through Understanding the Between is a great reference to have available.
As for the writing technique, Volodine’s juxtaposed words and phrases are wonderfully original, a unique style easy to read while retaining the unexpected. (Assuming the translator was able to preserve nuances of the original French.)
Storywise, Beckett-like characters in this entertaining work encounter the Bardo under circumstances unpredictable. I would not call these particularly funny and certainly not magical realism, so perhaps post-exotic is a most fitting label. Robert Thurman’s translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, Liberation Through Understanding the Between is a great reference to have available.
As for the writing technique, Volodine’s juxtaposed words and phrases are wonderfully original, a unique style easy to read while retaining the unexpected. (Assuming the translator was able to preserve nuances of the original French.)
August 18, 2025
Выбирай «Иль» и печальную вымирающую клоунаду. Одна из самых трепетных и нежных (но «Писатели» все же проникновеннее) книг Володина, плюс репрезентация поп-буддизма на уровне лучших образцов Пелевина. В середине немного провисает, но первая и финальная главки гениальные.
Read
May 19, 2017I'm not going to rate this book because it just wasn't for me. The references to the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Buddhist funeral practices were interesting, but the stories just seemed absurd and beyond me as far as "getting" them. I read them all, and none of them clicked.
April 8, 2016
This guy, this Volodine. It's quite a run, or anyway seems to be from the English-speaker POV. I haven't really dug in to see whether these are being released in anything like the order AV wrote them.
This one felt like it might not quite pack the punch. Still good, still funny and strange. But somehow it wasn't quite pushing the same buttons in quite the same perfect way. Then, somewhere around the end of the 4th story, when you started to realize (just like in the middle of We Monks and Soldiers, just like with Writers) how the structure of the thing is doing its work on you, that this isn't *just* a collection of stories, and suddenly its doing its palindromic work on you and everything just starts resonating?
This guy, this Volodine. Wow.
This one felt like it might not quite pack the punch. Still good, still funny and strange. But somehow it wasn't quite pushing the same buttons in quite the same perfect way. Then, somewhere around the end of the 4th story, when you started to realize (just like in the middle of We Monks and Soldiers, just like with Writers) how the structure of the thing is doing its work on you, that this isn't *just* a collection of stories, and suddenly its doing its palindromic work on you and everything just starts resonating?
This guy, this Volodine. Wow.
July 29, 2016
Few Buddhists would object to any good-hearted challenge to the Dharma. Even as esoteric yet revered a text as the Bardo Thidol, would be expected to hold its own in debate, or, to embrace a challenge. But this book just seems to me to be a thinly-veiled attempt to ridicule an ancient revered text and the practicing Buddhists who carry on the traditions associated with easing passage through the Bardo. It was inventive and funny in spots, especially in the first story, and accurate, again, in spots, in its depiction of what some Tibetan Buddhists might believe about the Bardo. But I didn't feel any new insights were gained by the authors disrespectful depictions. I expected to be enlightened and entertained, but ended up just being annoyed.
February 14, 2018
My faith in Volodine is restored - after somewhat disappointing "Post-Exoticism in Ten Lessons, Lesson Eleven" (a novel that theorized itself into insubstantiality). "Bardo or not Bardo" is his most impoverished (in a positive - Bersani's - sense), most depopulated and most "Irish" novel: imagine Flann O'Brien and Samuel Beckett collaborating on 7 variations of the final scene(s) from Fulci's THE BEYOND and Tolkin's THE RAPTURE.
September 29, 2017
surreal series of stories set in the Bardo, the waiting room between death and rebirth where Buddhists have the chance to cast off themselves and physical existence, or within 49 days they are reborn to suffer through another lifetime
various characters pass through the state, as lamas preach to their bodies or artifacts from the Bardo Thodol, in attempt to push them towards that sublimation
fascinating concept, but with characters and story lines intermingled and indefinite to the point where it detracted for me
various characters pass through the state, as lamas preach to their bodies or artifacts from the Bardo Thodol, in attempt to push them towards that sublimation
fascinating concept, but with characters and story lines intermingled and indefinite to the point where it detracted for me
September 20, 2022
I stumbled upon this book by accident, without any exposure to similar style literature. It was a blast! I couldn't stop reading it even though I wasn't sure what was happening nor where the plot was taking me. Maybe it was supposed to give me the feeling of walking across the Bardo? I definitely felt lost, I felt the darkness, the loneliness. The universe behind the main stories seemed very interesting, I wish there were more books giving me more insight to it. (Maybe there are? I still didn't explore other books from the author)
Read
August 23, 2024Բարդոն, ըստ բուդդայական ուսմունքի, մահվանից հետո 7 շաբաթ, ուղիղ 49 օր տևող շրջանն է, երբ մեռնողը որոշում է հետագա 'անելիքը'. վերանալ հավերժ լույսի մեջ, թե վերածնվել։
Գրքի 7 պատմվածքները հերոսների` Բարդոյով անցնելու ու անսպասելի վերածնունդների մասին է։
.
Սա ինձ համար վերընթերցում էր։ Արագ է կարդալ, թեթևացում է բերում։
Կարդացեք, եթե միտքը թեթև ռեստարտի կարիք ունի։
.
Գրքի շապիկը բացառիկ կերպով համընկնում է ստեղծագործությանը` տիբեթական Խայագրիվայի նկարից մի մաս է։
Գրքի 7 պատմվածքները հերոսների` Բարդոյով անցնելու ու անսպասելի վերածնունդների մասին է։
.
Սա ինձ համար վերընթերցում էր։ Արագ է կարդալ, թեթևացում է բերում։
Կարդացեք, եթե միտքը թեթև ռեստարտի կարիք ունի։
.
Գրքի շապիկը բացառիկ կերպով համընկնում է ստեղծագործությանը` տիբեթական Խայագրիվայի նկարից մի մաս է։
September 6, 2024
Read because one of my Creative Writing professors from the U of A translated this. I read Volodine's "Post-Exoticisms" last year and enjoyed the first half of this more, but several short stories, including the last three, were lost on me, I could no decipher what the point of these stories were. The first story was excellent, strong opening to this book.
September 27, 2017
As unclassifiable as Volodine's other work, breathes new life into several genres, including whatever genre the Tibetan book of the dead falls into.
November 26, 2017
The world as a black iron prison, please Mr. Volodine I want some more!?
December 6, 2018
An amusing and in the end touching book of seven episodes set in a science fictional future of lamaism, oppression, failed revolution and the Bardo Thodol.
stalled-paused
March 29, 2022Looks promising, but didn’t get past second story.
October 29, 2022
The scenes were always comical but i couldn't find any humor in the writing. so it ends up just a bunch of guys failing at... death?
July 18, 2025
Delightfully droll.
June 25, 2017
This book is a kind of metaphysical game that nearly led me to an existential crisis... But in a good way! It's funny, it's weird, it's a joy to read, and it's a challenge to any notion we might have of control, comfort, or concrete understanding of death. It's also impossible to describe without spoilers--though I don't think the concept of spoilers really apply to this book--but, still, beware of spoilers ahead.
This set of connected vignettes follows characters in a warped form of the Tibetan Bardo, a transitional point after death and before rebirth. The key is that most of the characters don't realize they have died. Their minds interpret their circumstances differently: they think they are on a train, in a blackout, in a bar. Often there is an observer: someone "reporting" on the experience. But then the lines blur and it's possible it's actually the reporter who has died and is in the Bardo. And then sometimes the lines blur again and we wonder if it's the narrator in the Bardo. Then the lines blur again...
Meanwhile, percolating through the experience is the voice of various monks (or is it a single monk?) reading the book of the dead to the corpse, trying to help the deceased navigate this purgatory world, urging movement toward the "Clear Light" and join Buddha rather than participate in the endless cycle of rebirth. Those voices manage to filter into the Bardo through various means: a radio, a jukebox, a loudspeaker, a telephone. Sometimes the voices are understood, often they are unintelligible or ignored. No one really knows what's going on and the dead keep attempting to rationalizing everything into sensory images from the old world.
At one point I started to wonder: Am I in the Bardo myself? (This was the previously mentioned existential crisis.) What if this book that I am reading is actually the way my mind has chosen to interpret the disembodied voice of a monk reaching out to me as I creep through a dark and surreal afterlife? What if I have died and am being coached through purgatory via the appearance of this surreal and confusing manuscript? It's uselessness as a real guide would align with most of the other experiences. While I of course didn't really believe this, at the same time I couldn't get the image out of my head.
Underlying much of this book is a real question about what the human spirit desires out of eternity. The monks keep urging everyone to let go, to destroy their individual soul and become Buddha. But some of the characters directly fight against the concept (as opposed to the ones who simply don't understand what's happening), they push back and scramble to hold on to themselves. Would I want transcendence if it meant dissolving my identity? And how is that better than the void of nothingness awaiting us? Is an infinite cycle of rebirth into this painful world a better alternative?
This set of connected vignettes follows characters in a warped form of the Tibetan Bardo, a transitional point after death and before rebirth. The key is that most of the characters don't realize they have died. Their minds interpret their circumstances differently: they think they are on a train, in a blackout, in a bar. Often there is an observer: someone "reporting" on the experience. But then the lines blur and it's possible it's actually the reporter who has died and is in the Bardo. And then sometimes the lines blur again and we wonder if it's the narrator in the Bardo. Then the lines blur again...
Meanwhile, percolating through the experience is the voice of various monks (or is it a single monk?) reading the book of the dead to the corpse, trying to help the deceased navigate this purgatory world, urging movement toward the "Clear Light" and join Buddha rather than participate in the endless cycle of rebirth. Those voices manage to filter into the Bardo through various means: a radio, a jukebox, a loudspeaker, a telephone. Sometimes the voices are understood, often they are unintelligible or ignored. No one really knows what's going on and the dead keep attempting to rationalizing everything into sensory images from the old world.
At one point I started to wonder: Am I in the Bardo myself? (This was the previously mentioned existential crisis.) What if this book that I am reading is actually the way my mind has chosen to interpret the disembodied voice of a monk reaching out to me as I creep through a dark and surreal afterlife? What if I have died and am being coached through purgatory via the appearance of this surreal and confusing manuscript? It's uselessness as a real guide would align with most of the other experiences. While I of course didn't really believe this, at the same time I couldn't get the image out of my head.
Underlying much of this book is a real question about what the human spirit desires out of eternity. The monks keep urging everyone to let go, to destroy their individual soul and become Buddha. But some of the characters directly fight against the concept (as opposed to the ones who simply don't understand what's happening), they push back and scramble to hold on to themselves. Would I want transcendence if it meant dissolving my identity? And how is that better than the void of nothingness awaiting us? Is an infinite cycle of rebirth into this painful world a better alternative?
September 16, 2016
A spiritual farce? A human comedy? A satiric view of the absurdity of humans? All of the above? Volodine takes a belief regarding the afterlife and demonstrates that humans, with their foibles, cannot manage to navigate it without total chaos ensuing. The author even takes a stab at the "play within a play" concept. Three vignettes within one vignette. It is a jumbled life, a jumbled afterlife, and a bit of a jumbled read. Very well done!
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September 4, 2016Check out our full list of Summer Reads at http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...
This book was featured also in the Nota Benes section of the Sept/Oct 2016 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...
This book was featured also in the Nota Benes section of the Sept/Oct 2016 issue of World Literature Today Magazine.
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.org/2...
February 24, 2017
If you have no taste for Volodine then you will feel that you too are on an interminable journey through some dark bardo realm. Conversely, if you find post-exotic lit oddly compelling, then read this one.
September 3, 2016
More accurately, 2.5. This was okay, but I was expecting to enjoy it more. There a few funny bits, but it mostly felt absurd and fell kind of flat. I have a feeling that the translation wasn't that great.
April 12, 2016
I reviewed this novel for "Music & Literature": http://www.musicandliterature.org/rev...
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews