The first English translation of Copi's comic masterpiece, a careening pyrotechnic picaresque across France, America, and Ibiza. Set among the flamboyant demi-monde of the 1970s Paris underground,
The Queens' Ball follows the narrator Copi in his attempt to write a novel as life comes undone around him. His Roman lover Pietro is stolen by a Marilyn Monroe impersonator whose coterie take up residence in Copi's flat and pump out low-budget pornographic rags and films. His friends leave him, burnt out from the theatrical excess of the decade. And worst of all his editor keeps calling him, demanding to know where the book is. Propelled by Copi's careening prose and incisive humor,
The Queens' Ball swerves from Paris to Ibiza to New York and back again in a whirlwind frenzy of love, loss, and madness. Featuring an illuminating critical appendix by Copi's current French editor, Thibaud Croisy, Kit Schluter's rhapsodic translation marks the début of Copi's world-renowned fiction in English.
《科比（Copi）漫畫傑作的首部英文翻譯，這是一部在法國、美國和伊比薩島（Ibiza）之間狂奔的火花四射的流浪故事。》
故事設定在1970年代巴黎地下的華麗半社會中，《女王之舞會》（The Queens' Ball）跟隨敘述者科比（Copi）在生活崩潰的同時試圖寫一本小說。他的羅馬情人皮耶特羅（Pietro）被一位模仿瑪麗蓮·夢露（Marilyn Monroe）的演員搶走，該演員的圈子在科比的公寓中安家，並製作低預算的色情小冊子和電影。他的朋友們因為這十年來的戲劇性過度而離開了他。最糟糕的是，他的編輯不斷打電話給他，要求知道書稿的進度。在科比狂野的文筆和犀利的幽默推動下，《女王之舞會》在愛、失落和瘋狂的旋風中，從巴黎轉向伊比薩，再到紐約，然後又回來。這部作品包含了科比目前的法國編輯提博·克羅伊西（Thibaud Croisy）所撰寫的啟發性批評附錄，基特·施盧特（Kit Schluter）的熱情翻譯標誌著科比的世界知名小說首次以英文面世。
Copi, whose given name was Raúl Damonte, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1939 and emigrated to Paris, France in 1962, where he died in 1987. He was a prolific playwright, novelist, and cartoonist whose provocative output thumbs its nose at modesty and melancholy. A canonical figure of 1970s Parisian bohemia and counterculture, he produced a prolific body of work that was hybrid and overflowing, ferocious and tender, baroque and distinct from the literary scene of his time. Among his most famous works are
The Queens' Ball,
The Homosexual or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself,
Loretta Strong, and
An Inopportune Visit, the first play written in the French language to deal with the AIDS crisis. The unforgettable comics he published in major French outlets such as
Le Nouvel Observateur,
Libération, and
Hara-Kiri are still widely circulated today.
Thibaud Croisy is an author and theater director. In recent years, he has staged several original plays, including
Témoignage d'un homme qui n'avait pas envie d'en castrer un autre (Testimony of one man who didn't feel like castrating another man),
La Prophétie des Lilas (The lilac prophecy), and
D'où vient ce désir, partagé par tant d'hommes, qui les pousse à aller voir ce qu'il y a au fond d'un trou? (Wherefrom this desire, shared by so many men, to go see what's at the bottom of a hole?). In 2022, he directed Copi's
The Homosexual or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself, which was staged in Paris, Marseille, Nantes, Geneva, and elsewhere. He has written numerous texts on Copi, as well as afterwords to several recent editions of his works, and is currently preparing a Copi biography, forthcoming from Christian Bourgois éditeur.
科比（Copi），本名拉烏爾·達蒙特（Raúl Damonte），於1939年出生於阿根廷布宜諾斯艾利斯，1962年移居法國巴黎，並於1987年去世。他是一位多產的劇作家、小說家和漫畫家，其挑釁性的作品對於謙遜和憂鬱嗤之以鼻。作為1970年代巴黎波希米亞和反文化的典範人物，他創作了大量混合且充滿活力的作品，既兇猛又溫柔，華麗且與當時的文學界截然不同。他最著名的作品包括《女王的舞會》（The Queens' Ball）、《同性戀者或表達自我的困難》（The Homosexual or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself）、《洛雷塔·斯特朗》（Loretta Strong）以及《不合時宜的拜訪》（An Inopportune Visit），這是第一部用法語撰寫的關於艾滋病危機的劇作。他在《新觀察家》（Le Nouvel Observateur）、《解放報》（Libération）和《哈拉基里》（Hara-Kiri）等主要法國媒體上發表的難忘漫畫至今仍廣為流傳。
提博·克羅伊西（Thibaud Croisy）是一位作家和劇場導演。近年來，他上演了幾部原創劇作，包括《一個不想閹割另一個人的男人的證詞》（Témoignage d'un homme qui n'avait pas envie d'en castrer un autre）、《丁香的預言》（La Prophétie des Lilas）以及《這種渴望從何而來，為何如此多的男人想去看看洞的底部有什麼？》（D'où vient ce désir, partagé par tant d'hommes, qui les pousse à aller voir ce qu'il y a au fond d'un trou?）。在2022年，他導演了科比的《同性戀者或表達自我的困難》，該劇在巴黎、馬賽、南特、日內瓦等地上演。他撰寫了許多關於科比的文本，以及幾個近期版本作品的後記，並且目前正在準備一本科比的傳記，將由Christian Bourgois éditeur出版。
