Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
In a controversial first novel that took the French literary world by storm and won the Prix de Flore, Tristan Garcia uses sex, friendships, and love affairs to show what happens to people when political ideals—Marxism, gay rights, sexual liberation, nationalism—come to an end. As Elizabeth Levallois, a cultural journalist, looks back on this decade and on the ravages of the AIDS epidemic in Paris, a drama unfolds—one in which love turns to hate and fidelity turns to betrayal, in both affairs of the heart and politics.
With great verve and ingenuity, Garcia lays claim to an era that promised freedom as never before, and he paints an indelible, sharp, but sympathetic portrait of intellectuals lost in the age of MTV.
Synopsis
Paris in the eighties. Four friends. Three men and one woman. Two affairs that destroy a life.
In a controversial first novel that took the French literary world by storm and won the Prix de Flore, Tristan Garcia uses sex, friendships, and love affairs to show what happens to people when political ideals—Marxism, gay rights, sexual liberation, nationalism—come to an end. As Elizabeth Levallois, a cultural journalist, looks back on this decade and on the ravages of the AIDS epidemic in Paris, a drama unfolds—one in which love turns to hate and fidelity turns to betrayal, in both affairs of the heart and politics.
With great verve and ingenuity, Garcia lays claim to an era that promised freedom as never before, and he paints an indelible, sharp, but sympathetic portrait of intellectuals lost in the age of MTV.
The New York Times - Alexander Nazaryan
Despite its cultured Gallic sensibilities, Hate…is surprisingly taut and readable. Garcia, a trained philosopher, has managed to write—in fewer than 300 pages, no less—the kind of social novel his American counterparts too often avoid in favor of solipsistic musings.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Spinning out the tale of her relationships with three men in Paris from the 1980s to the present, Liz, the narrator of this disappointingly flat import, largely lets life happen around her as her friends and lovers have spectacular highs and lows. While the Liz's men friends embark on interesting lives--the HIV-positive Willie becomes an outspoken proponent of unprotected sex and finds himself a countercultural icon of sorts, while Doumé, Willie's ex and a proponent of safe sex as "the public face" of a gay-rights organization, rails against him--she watches the drama and sometimes takes a bit of abuse. Her tepid affair with married intellectual Liebo seems to keep her content, but, of course, the situation isn't exactly ideal for her or for him. Garcia's story is certainly not lacking in drama, or--thanks to flamboyant Willie--histrionics, but despite a fluid translation, there's very little to inspire interest in or empathy for characters as passive as Liz or singularly self-obsessed as the others. (Nov.)From the Publisher
“Among the first novels we read this season, the most mind-blowing is by twenty-seven-year-old Tristan Garcia: Hate: A Romance, a morality tale that grapples with the political and intellectual battles of the last two decades of French life and how those are caught up in the sex lives of the protagonists. A novel we’re still reeling from, and which we’ve chosen to put at the very top of our honor roll.”—Les Inrockuptibles“One of the revelations of the literary season . . . An intimate, romantic, political, and cultural fresco [of the 1980s], a portrait startling in its accuracy.” —Christine Rousseau, Le Monde
“The real eye-opener of the season . . . A novel that made me reassess a decade that I’d lived through with my eyes closed. It took an upstart philosopher . . . to make me understand what was going on when I was twenty years old, when the Left became the Right.” —Frédéric Beigbeder, author of Windows on the World and founder of the Prix de Flore
Kirkus Reviews
Four Parisians navigate a shifting personal and political landscape in a modern, sexually liberated Europe.
Tracing the rise, fall and subsequent reinvention of a generation through a few key relationships, this deliberately provocative novel makes for a gossipy snapshot of the French intelligentsia. The narrator, Elizabeth "Liz" Levallois, is a chic pop-culture journalist who is conducting a longtime affair with Jean-Michel "Leibo" Leibowitz, a married Jewish intellectual best known for writing a book about fidelity. A one-time leftist, he finds himself, as the years go by, shifting to the right, taking on a contrarian's role. Liz writes for the same newspaper as Leibo's college pal Dominique Rossi, aka Doum, a local gay icon who came of age in the fabulous, anything-goes '80s. Liz fatefully introduces him to William Miller, aka Willie, a naïve younger man from the provinces. They fall in love, with Doum, who is HIV positive, taking the self-absorbed Willie under his wing. After the two split up, Doum, in the spirit of the times, takes a leadership role advocating for safe sex within the gay community. Willie, motivated by perversity, self-destruction and a twisted kind of love, consequently makes a name for himself as a defiant anti-safe sex ambassador. Preaching a subversive "no condoms" gospel, Willie becomes more and more obsessed with "destroying" his ex. Lacking Doum's connections and coherence, he posts humiliating and pornographic photos of Doum on the Internet, and gets him marginalized in the gay-activist organization that he founded. But eventually, enough is enough, as Doum teams up with Leibo for a book and media tour that manages to make them both relevant again. Meanwhile, fading enfant terrible Willie spirals out of control–with disastrous results. That leaves a rueful Liz to pick up the pieces and question her choices. A sensation when it was first released in the author's native France, Garcia's debut is filled with multiple cultural touchstones and a "you had to have been there" insider quality that could put off some readers.
Edgy, pretentious romanàclef.
Alexander Nazaryan
Despite its cultured Gallic sensibilities, Hate…is surprisingly taut and readable. Garcia, a trained philosopher, has managed to write—in fewer than 300 pages, no less—the kind of social novel his American counterparts too often avoid in favor of solipsistic musings.—The New York Times