Les Météores

This is Tournier’s third novel — he was by then a member of the Académie Goncourt — following Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique (Friday, or the Other Island) and Le Roi des aulnes (The Ogre).

The novel is built on a double structure: the story of the scandalous uncle, a homosexual and fierce detractor of heterosexuals and lesbians, who reigns over the refuse heaps of SEDOMU (Société de Ramassage des Ordures Ménagères), a self-proclaimed “prince of the dumps”; and the story of twinship itself, following twin brothers Jean and Paul on a journey around the world, one pursuing the other.

Tournier undertook a literal journey around the world to write this novel: he interviewed numerous twins, met Professor René Zazzo, the leading specialist on twinship, stayed at a home for disabled children, waded through the refuse dumps of Miramas near Marseille, went out on rounds with garbage collectors, and visited the incineration plant at Issy-les-Moulineaux. “No book has ever required so much research from me, because these are things one cannot simply invent,” he said. What he learned allowed him to write the story of these identical twins who, when asleep, are “restored to the innermost part of themselves, brought back to what is deepest and most unchanging in them — brought back to their common ground — […] indistinguishable. […] Their immaculate resemblance is the image of the matrix-like limbo from which they emerged. Sleep restores to them that original innocence in which they merge into one.”