Hotel Crystal

by Olivier Rolin

Translated from the original French by Jane Kuntz

At some Parisian lost-and-found, a mysterious manuscript scribbled onto stray bits of hotel stationary and postcards and stuffed into an abandoned briefcase comes into the hands of an "editor," who claims to faithfully transcribe and assemble the random texts. On the face of it, these consist of fastidious descriptions of a series of hotel rooms in cities around the globe, but their world-weary writer, a certain "Olivier Rolin," is also involved in a number of highly improbable international networks, populated by unsavory thugs and Mata Haris in distress.
Author Olivier Rolin has dipped into his extensive travel notebooks to create this highly inventive novel that spoofs, among others, the decaying international espionage scene, the literary author publicity tour, and official French culture, all against a backdrop of the queasy alienation secreted by standard-issue hotel rooms across the globe.

(From Publisher).

Olivier Rolin was born in Boulogne-Billancourt, France in 1947. He spent his childhood in Senegal, but continued his studies in Paris, where he received a degree in philosophy and letters. Considered one of France’s most distinguished contemporary novelists, Rolin won the Prix Femina for his novel Port-Sudan, while his Tigre en Papier was nominated for the 2003 Goncourt Prize. In addition to writing novels, Rolin is an editor at Seuil and has written for Libération and Le Nouvel Observateur.