The Carcasses

The Carcasses is the last of Federman's texts to be published during his lifetime. It is a "self-transaction" and expansion of the 2009 French edition, Les Carcasses. In this science-fictional fable there is life after death, and even fornication between carcasses condemned to eternally linger in a universal zone: a Beckettian limbo in which all carcasses - humans, animals or homofaunas - are subject to constant and tragi-comical transmutation.

RAYMOND FEDERMAN (1928-2009) was born in Paris, France. When he was fourteen years old, his parents and two sisters were arrested during the 1942 roundup and sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp for extermination. The boy survived because his mother had pushed him into a closet. After World War II, Federman emigrated to the USA, where he eventually became one of the most radical thinkers, critics, and influential authors of contemporary literature. In different versions, both in English and in French, he narrates the life story of a man called "Federman," always trying to decipher the gesture of his mother that saved his life. Federman received the American Book Award and his books have been translated into 14 languages.