Loin des bras

by Metin Arditi

La faillite menace l'Institut Alderson, pensionnat suisse pour fils de familles aisées. Un repreneur se propose, qui entend soumettre l'établissement, et ses professeurs, à un audit décisif pour leur avenir. Dans ce huis clos fait de solitudes collectives, chacun cache une blessure que les circonstances ne tardent pas à mettre à nu.

Genres: Roman

432 pages, Paperback

First published August 19, 2009

About the author

Metin Arditi is a French-speaking Swiss writer of Turkish origin. He left Turkey at the age of seven. After spending eleven years in a Swiss boarding school in Lausanne, he studied at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where he earned a degree in physics and a postgraduate degree in nuclear engineering. He continued his studies at Stanford Business School, where he got an MBA. He lives in Geneva, where he is very involved in the cultural and artistic life of the city. From 2000 to 2013 he was Chairman of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande (O.S.R.). He is a member of the Strategic Council of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where over the years he taught physics (Assistant to Prof. Mercier), economics and management (as lecturer) and creative writing (as Visiting Professor). In 1988, he created the Arditi Foundation which awards fifteen annual prizes to graduates of the University of Geneva and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. The Arditi Foundation has purchased and offered to the University of Geneva a landmark theater, the Cinema Manhattan, now called Auditorium Fondation Arditi. He is the founder of " The Instruments of Peace Foundation ", which offers musical education to children of Palestine and Israel. He is a member of the Foundation Board of the Music Conservatory of Geneva. He chaired the Building Committee of the Martin Bodmer Museum in Cologny. In December 2012, Metin Arditi was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. In June 2014, UNESCO appointed him Special Envoy. In September 2014, he created the Arditi Foundation for Intercultural Dialogue.

Reviews

[Marina Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you thought, like me, that Swiss boarding schools are for wealthy people with a sense of entitlement, their insufferable progeny and self-important teachers, you will find some vague echoes of that in this book. However, this is a school for the hurt and wounded. Both the schoolboys and the teachers all have secrets and flaws, but are also very vulnerable, they are in pain and crave a little human connection. A little predictable perhaps, and the style is quite bare, but it's effective.

[Cyril · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very well written.

[Denis · Rating 3 out of 5]

How frustrating it is that not only a lot of book covers are now unavailable on this site, but that even a title can be incorrectly written! It is actually, in this case : Loin des bras (meaning: far from the arms), the added word "roman" just meaning that it's a novel. Anyway. About the book. Here's a curious, yet quietly enthralling novel, written by an author born in Turkey but living in Switzerland (and, I believe, writing in French). It seems, at first, deceptively simple, and traditional, in a pleasant but slightly monotonous way : Loin des bras, which takes place at the end of the fifties, is about a few months in the lives of the teachers and the students of an upscale (but slowly declining) boarding school by a Swiss lake, and each short chapter focuses on a different person. Arditi's very surgical, analytical, and - apparently at least - cold writing creates a strange atmosphere: you can sense the control that the writer has over each word he uses, but also over his characters and their stories. It could be frustrating, but, as the story evolves, and you discover, layer after layer, what hides behind the surface, you realize how much this control, and this supposed coldness, help immensely Arditi in putting into light emotional and powerful moments that, because they are presented without any sentimentality, take a suddenly forceful and brutal dimension. It also helps turning what could have been cliché characters into complex and very human people. Nothing much seems to happen, in this book, and sometimes what happens is a bit predictable, yet it is an hypnotic reading, and it builds an undeniable depth of emotion, that lingers on after you've finished the last sentence. In the small world of a school, in the heart of a pristine landscape, quite a lot of what defines our tragic humanity can actually emerge, sometimes in an almost indifferent way, sometimes under poignant circumstances.

[Zéro Janvier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un récit sympathique qui sert de prétexte à une galerie de portraits : des personnages tous différents, intéressants par leur passé et leur personnalité. J'ai bien aimé cette bouffée d'air frais après l'ambiance désespérante de "Less Than Zero" de Bret Easton Ellis que j'avais lu juste avant.