The Dress
5 hrs. 43 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Jérôme Verdière
Author
Jérôme Verdière
Narrator
Yury Krasikov
Narrator
Yury Krasikov
“The Dress” is a book about how the world goes mad, but love and humor still have the power to save it.
One evening, before setting the table, Isabelle gives her husband a dress. She wants Jean-Pierre to wear it for dinner. He can’t understand— is it a bad joke, is his wife sick, or has the world changed so much? But soon the guests will arrive and the bill is counted in minutes. Jean-Pierre is waiting for a series of fantasmagoric twists: a flower-pattern dress in a box, frightened guests, an attempt to strangle the neighbor (with that same dress). But that’s later. Jérôme de Verdière questions the sanity of what’s going on around him and explores relationships between couples, mocking both blissful progressives and gloomy conservatives.
In math and logic, there’s the reductio ad absurdum method—or “leading to absurdity”—a technique used to prove that some opinion is untenable in such a way that either it contradicts itself or the consequences that follow from it reveal a contradiction.
Jérôme de Verdière applied this method to modernity in his book “The Dress,” and the result is a novel filled with sharp dialogue, French humor, irony, and grotesque comedy—a real triumph of the absurd.
It can safely be said that Jérôme continues the tradition of Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett.
One evening, before setting the table, Isabelle gives her husband a dress. She wants Jean-Pierre to wear it for dinner. He can’t understand— is it a bad joke, is his wife sick, or has the world changed so much? But soon the guests will arrive and the bill is counted in minutes. Jean-Pierre is waiting for a series of fantasmagoric twists: a flower-pattern dress in a box, frightened guests, an attempt to strangle the neighbor (with that same dress). But that’s later. Jérôme de Verdière questions the sanity of what’s going on around him and explores relationships between couples, mocking both blissful progressives and gloomy conservatives.
In math and logic, there’s the reductio ad absurdum method—or “leading to absurdity”—a technique used to prove that some opinion is untenable in such a way that either it contradicts itself or the consequences that follow from it reveal a contradiction.
Jérôme de Verdière applied this method to modernity in his book “The Dress,” and the result is a novel filled with sharp dialogue, French humor, irony, and grotesque comedy—a real triumph of the absurd.
It can safely be said that Jérôme continues the tradition of Eugène Ionesco and Samuel Beckett.
