Pseudo

Written in the first person, this fascinating novel unfolds like a set of Russian dolls: it is ostensibly written by Paul Pavlowitch, who pretends to reveal himself under his “true” identity, or more precisely to portray a patient writer (himself), interned in Copenhagen to treat a form of schizophrenia linked to a paranoid perception of the world, with its violence, its wars, its tortures. Since the best defense is attack, the narrator brings in, under the transparent guise of “Tonton Macoute,” Romain Gary: an overbearing cousin with whom Pavlowitch-Ajar maintains a love-hate relationship. In Vie et mort d’Émile Ajar, a confession published posthumously, Gary would say of Pseudo: “I put myself in it as I had been invented, and since all the critics had thus recognized me in the character of Tonton Macoute, it occurred to no one that, instead of Paul Pavlowitch inventing Romain Gary, it was Romain Gary inventing Paul Pavlowitch.”

Copies bearing an autograph note by Émile Ajar are extremely rare.