The Pleasure of Drowning
SynopsisPlot
Fairy tales have been told hundreds of times and have been around for centuries. They are not just something we tell, but something we live. Jean Bürlesk takes us through these familiar paths, tempering the fantastical with a sharp tongue and a satirical vision. Irony and unease go hand in hand in this debut collection by the winner of the Prix d'Encouragement de la Fondation Servais 2019.
Story
About this book
The Pleasure of Drowning is a debut short story collection by Jean Bürlesk that reworks legends and fairy tales. The stories revisit familiar narrative paths, from well-known European tales to older folk sources, but reshape them with irony and satirical observation. Rather than retelling these stories faithfully, Bürlesk uses their structures as starting points for something sharper and less comfortable.
The collection sits at the border between fantasy and social commentary. Fairy tales, as the book treats them, are not only inherited narratives but patterns that repeat in ordinary life. Bürlesk writes with a tone that mixes unease and dark humor, pulling the fantastical into territory that feels pointed and contemporary. The familiar comfort of a fairy tale framework is present, but the stories push against it steadily.
Jean Bürlesk is from Luxembourg, and this collection won the Prix d'Encouragement de la Fondation Servais in 2019, a literary prize awarded in that country. Luxembourg's literary scene operates across several languages, and its writers often move between French, German, Luxembourgish, and English. The Pleasure of Drowning represents one example of Luxembourgish writing reaching an English-language readership.
