It is the literary sensation of the year in France. A first novel by a dyslexic author that has had readers crying -- and laughing out loud -- on the Paris metro. Before he wrote "Waiting for Bojangles" (En attendant Bojangles) in seven weeks at his parents' home, 35-year-old Olivier Bourdeaut had "failed at just about everything else in my life", he said.
Like the boy narrator in his book, Bourdeaut was always getting his letters and numbers the wrong way round. But in the three months since his beautifully written tale of a boy growing up in a bohemian home where unopened bills pile up like mountain ranges in the hall, he has won three of France's top literary awards and seen his book rise to the top of the bestseller lists.
His story has charmed critics and the public alike, with Johanna Luyssen in the Liberation daily comparing it to Muriel Barbery's massive international 2006 bestseller "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". Jerome Garcin, the host of France's most listened to books radio show, was even more evangelical. "Remember the name Olivier Bourdeaut," he wrote days after the book was published by Finitude, a small imprint in the southwestern city of Bordeaux. "He deserves all the success which will cascade upon him for this extravagant and moving fable."
From its opening lines -- "My father told me that before I was born he was a fly hunter, and that he hunted them with a harpoon" -- the book takes the reader on a fantastical journey with this highly unusual family and their pet Numidian crane, Mademoiselle Superfetatorie. Gallons of wine and champagne are quaffed and creels of lobsters flambed during the frequent parties at the shambolic apartment, where the parents and their friends dance to Nina Simone's song "Mr Bojangles", whose gently melancholic rhythm suffuses the whole book.
It does not take long to realise that this is also a great love story, which like all the very best ones, also has a tragic ending.
