Migrations

by Gabriel Josipovici

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Gabriel Josipovici was born in Nice in 1940 of Russo-Italian, Romano-Levantine parents. He lived in Egypt from 1945 to 1956, when he came to Britain. He read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, graduating with a First in 1961. From 1963 to 1998 he taught at the University of Sussex. He is the author of seventeen novels, three volumes of short stories, eight critical works, and numerous stage and radio plays, and is a regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement. His plays have been performed throughout Britain and on radio in Britain, France and Germany, and his work has been translated into the major European languages and Arabic. In 2001 he published A Life, a biographical memoir of his mother, the translator and poet Sacha Rabinovitch (London Magazine editions). His most recent works are Two Novels: 'After' and 'Making Mistakes' (Carcanet), What Ever Happened to Modernism? (Yale University Press), Heart's Wings (Carcanet, 2010) and Infinity (Carcanet, 2012).

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 5 out of 5]

A rather claustrophobic work, Gabriel Josipivoci's 1977 novel Migrations is a nonstop circulation between interleaved scenes, likely all featuring the same unnamed character: a man pacing in an empty room; a man in bed with a presumed prostitute; a man walking the streets of an unfamiliar town; a man struggling to explain himself to his lover in a busily furnished room; a child in an orphanage or other institution. There are no chapter or section breaks; each scene blurs into the next, often repeating action and dialogue, an ever-widening gyre of stripped-down, cinematic prose. The repetition is both mesmerizing and suffocating. The influence of the Nouveau Roman, particularly via Robbe-Grillet and Duras, is present in the recurring scenes and circuitous conversations revealing an increasing amount of detail over time. As to what it's about, one comes away with a sense of the restlessness of humanity—the constant motion in search of a 'real place' to stay, to root down and make one's own. But when we think we've found what we're looking for, it is ultimately an illusion. These 'attempt[s] to provide a resting-place for the imagination' are futile—for nothing and nowhere ever remains the same, it is all in constant flux, and so at some point we are always forced to move on once again.

We are in the interstices. In the intervals. We are that which moves between the spaces. Which conjures up the spaces.