The Man Who Cried with Laughter

8 hrs. 23 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Frédéric Beigbeder

Narrator Sergey Stillavin

Description

You think this is a book about France? You’re wrong! It’s about our shared Old World—which isn’t just changing, but… dying, snapping and whining.

Frederick Beigbeder’s new novel completes—or maybe continues—the cycle about “the life and adventures of Octave Parango, who we left somewhere in Russia…” If we were writing newspaper announcements for you, you’d probably see headlines like: Beigbeder vs. the dictatorship of laughter! Beigbeder about himself, about us, and about the era when clowns took over power. Beigbeder is back—we were waiting for him!

“ The Man Who Cried from Laughter” is an original novel with a crazy streak, a scourge of society’s flaws. The hero and the author are alike as two drops of water. Octave Parango confesses without sparing himself—make your own conclusions!

He worked in advertising in the 1990s, in High Fashion in the 2000s, and now he’s a comedy commentator on the largest nationwide state radio station every Thursday at 8:55 a.m. Beigbeder is back, and his doppelganger describes the realities of the media world—one that laughs at the still-hot ashes of journalistic ethics. One day Octave arrives to the morning show unprepared, and the bad student is expelled from media paradise. Frederick Beigbeder tells the story of his life… through new adventures of Octave Parango, a convinced life-spoiler whose life changes not over time, but instantly.

Alcohol, drugs, and sex seem to make up the foundation of Octave Parango’s life, the resident humorist of France Publique radio. But the familiar order of his world is attacked… by the Yellow Vests. Just one night spent seeking pleasures that destroy themselves puts everything back in its place—and it turns out that the main things are the first words and the first steps of his son, his daughter’s laughter (from which he himself wants to laugh too), and his wife’s embrace in a far-off world without upheavals—at home, where he is waiting.