Les Têtes de Stéphanie

Gary spins an elaborate hoax, playfully corrupting the literary world on a grand scale: a foretaste of the birth of Émile Ajar. With Les Têtes de Stéphanie, Gary does not merely attribute a work to a false author but invents a complete writer, with an entire world of his own, importing the lie of fiction into reality: he created for this purpose Shatan Bogat, along with his lurid biography. Hiding in India, this American journalist was supposed to have denounced arms trafficking in an earlier novel, Seven Years in Fire, which had allegedly been awarded the Dakkan Prize. No one would think to verify that neither the text nor the prize existed. To lend credibility to the deception, the manuscript was delivered in English to Éditions Gallimard, which produced a translation. But Shatan Bogat proved a demanding author: “when he discovers Gallimard’s translation, he decides to redo it himself. As he had already done, Gary retranslates the book and wonders whether he might go even further than with John Markham Beach. This time, the translator persona will be a woman: Françoise Lovat. Two false names, a change of gender, a change of language and a translation: that is a great deal for a single man. Gary takes on all the roles.” (Maxime Decout, “Des faux papiers en règle,” Raison présente, no. 208, 103–114).

A rare first printing, without the vignette showing Romain Gary’s face.