The Man in a Hurry

Praise

“Pushkin Press’s gorgeous new edition of Morand’s masterpiece, written in 1941, is a shockingly clever farce. . . This is a strange book, written in prose as speedy as its impossible hero, and Morand deserves to be widely revisited both for the ageless appeal of his style and the specific (sometimes worrying) portrait of human nature at war with 1940s modernity.” — Publishers Weekly

“Admired both by Ezra Pound and by Marcel Proust as a pioneer craftsman of Modernist French prose… The sheer shapeliness of his prose recalls Hemingway; the urbanity of his self-destructiveness compares with Fitzgerald’s; and his camera eye is as lucidly stroboscopic as that of Dos Passos.” - The New York Times

“The translation’s prose is refined and worldly, the atmosphere European, the overall effect that of a jeu d’esprit. . . The four women’s curious behavior recalls moments in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast novels and Eugenides’ Virgin Suicides.” – Kirkus Reviews

“Morand was the all-round aesthete.” - Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

“Morand was a citizen of the world, with a sharp eye and a neat turn of phrase.” - Tablet

“Without a doubt the best French writer of the twentieth century.” - Philippe Sollers