image of person or book cover 251277435663623300.jpg
Image courtesy of publisher's website.
y separately published work icon Crossings single work   novel  
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... 2019 Crossings
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'I didn't write this book. I stole it...

'A Parisian bookbinder stumbles across a manuscript containing three stories, each as unlikely as the other.

'The first, 'The Education of a Monster', is a letter penned by the poet Charles Baudelaire to an illiterate girl. The second, 'City of Ghosts', is a noir romance set in Paris in 1940 as the Germans are invading. The third, 'Tales of the Albatross', is the strangest of the three: the autobiography of a deathless enchantress. Together, they tell the tale of two lost souls peregrinating through time.

'An unforgettable tour de force with echoes of Roberto Bolaño, David Mitchell and Umberto Eco, Crossings is a novel in three parts, designed to be read in two different directions, spanning a hundred and fifty years and seven lifetimes.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

    • Sydney, New South Wales,: Picador , 2019 .
      image of person or book cover 251277435663623300.jpg
      Image courtesy of publisher's website.
      Extent: 384p.
      Note/s:
      • Published 28 May 2019.

      ISBN: 9781760557256

Other Formats

  • Dyslexic edition.
  • Large print.

Works about this Work

The Monstrosities of Modernity : Baudelaire’s Legacy in Alex Landragin’s Crossings Peter D. Mathews , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 67 no. 2 2022; (p. 96-108)
'As John Hawke examines in Australian Literature and the Symbolist Movement (2009), there has been a long and fruitful engagement between Australian modernism and the French avant-garde poets of the 19th century. This trend has continued into the 21st century through works like Street to Street (2009) by Brian Castro, about the influence of Stephane Mallarme on the Australian poet Christopher Brennan, and David Brooks' study The Sons of Clovis   (2011), which traces the French precursors of the Ern Malley hoax. My own book on From Poet to Novelist : The Orphic Journey of John A. Scott (2022), focuses on how Scott reads the myth of Orpheus through French poets like Mallarme and Arthur Rimbaud. Alex Landragin joins this tradition for both literary and personal reasons: born in France, Landragin's family moved to Australia when he was a child. This essay examines how his debut novel, Crossings (2019), draws on the work of Charles Baudelaire to evaluate the ethical shortcomings of the modern world.' (Introduction) 
 
Alex Landragin : Crossings Chris Flynn , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 22-28 June 2019;

'Metempsychosis, or the transmigration of the soul, usually happens after death, when the consciousness and memories of an individual are transported into the body of another. If you believe that sort of thing. It is also a handy, if well-trodden, literary device, used to influential effect in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.' (Introduction)

Metempsychosis Amy Baillieu , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June - July no. 412 2019; (p. 36)

'I didn’t write this review. I stole it. Or so a review that echoes the framing conceit of Alex Landragin’s elegant and unusual début might begin. This richly allusive, speculative historical novel opens with a preface from the book’s self-described ‘adopted parent’, the fictionalised ‘Alex Landragin’. Following the sudden death of the ‘Baroness’, an ardent and obsessive bibliophile with a keen interest in Charles Baudelaire, this ‘second-generation Parisian bookbinder’ finds himself in possession of a mysterious loose-leaf manuscript. Despite the Baroness’s strict injunction not to read it, he finally succumbs to curiosity and devours it in ‘one fevered sitting, on a winter’s night so cold ice was forming on the Seine’.' (Introduction)

Metempsychosis Amy Baillieu , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June - July no. 412 2019; (p. 36)

'I didn’t write this review. I stole it. Or so a review that echoes the framing conceit of Alex Landragin’s elegant and unusual début might begin. This richly allusive, speculative historical novel opens with a preface from the book’s self-described ‘adopted parent’, the fictionalised ‘Alex Landragin’. Following the sudden death of the ‘Baroness’, an ardent and obsessive bibliophile with a keen interest in Charles Baudelaire, this ‘second-generation Parisian bookbinder’ finds himself in possession of a mysterious loose-leaf manuscript. Despite the Baroness’s strict injunction not to read it, he finally succumbs to curiosity and devours it in ‘one fevered sitting, on a winter’s night so cold ice was forming on the Seine’.' (Introduction)

Alex Landragin : Crossings Chris Flynn , 2019 single work review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 22-28 June 2019;

'Metempsychosis, or the transmigration of the soul, usually happens after death, when the consciousness and memories of an individual are transported into the body of another. If you believe that sort of thing. It is also a handy, if well-trodden, literary device, used to influential effect in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas.' (Introduction)

The Monstrosities of Modernity : Baudelaire’s Legacy in Alex Landragin’s Crossings Peter D. Mathews , 2022 single work criticism
— Appears in: Westerly , vol. 67 no. 2 2022; (p. 96-108)
'As John Hawke examines in Australian Literature and the Symbolist Movement (2009), there has been a long and fruitful engagement between Australian modernism and the French avant-garde poets of the 19th century. This trend has continued into the 21st century through works like Street to Street (2009) by Brian Castro, about the influence of Stephane Mallarme on the Australian poet Christopher Brennan, and David Brooks' study The Sons of Clovis   (2011), which traces the French precursors of the Ern Malley hoax. My own book on From Poet to Novelist : The Orphic Journey of John A. Scott (2022), focuses on how Scott reads the myth of Orpheus through French poets like Mallarme and Arthur Rimbaud. Alex Landragin joins this tradition for both literary and personal reasons: born in France, Landragin's family moved to Australia when he was a child. This essay examines how his debut novel, Crossings (2019), draws on the work of Charles Baudelaire to evaluate the ethical shortcomings of the modern world.' (Introduction) 
 
Last amended 19 Nov 2020 10:43:55
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