L'homme de nulle part

First edition, a Service de Presse (advance) copy.
Foxing to covers, complete with publisher's (advertising) slip.
Work illustrated with plates by Lê Ph?.
Rare autograph inscription dated and signed by Pham Van Ky to the literary critic of Nouvelles littéraires.
The stories that comprise this first work of fiction by the Vietnamese francophone writer Van Ky draw inspiration from Vietnamese legends. "Pham Van Ky ne se contente pas de traduire des histoires vietnamiennes en français ; son écriture crée plutôt une sorte de palimpseste culturel dans lequel la composition des contes est infléchie par des allusions à des textes littéraires français. [...] Pour Pham Van Ky, en revanche, l'acte d'écrire en français est inextricablement lié à un système d'éducation coloniale qui l'a conduit du Vietnam, du Collège de Quinhon au Lycée du Protectorat de Hanoi, puis à Paris en 1938 [...] le titre même de L'Homme de nulle part résonne comme une question fondamentale qui hantera sa production littéraire pendant vingt ans : que reste-t-il de l'identité lorsqu'un sujet n'est plus ancré dans un environnement géographique - et par extension, culturel et linguistique - particulier ?" (Pham Van Ky is not content to simply translate Vietnamese stories into French; his writing rather creates a sort of cultural palimpsest in which the composition of the tales is influenced by allusions to French literary texts. [...] For Pham Van Ky, however, the act of writing in French is inextricably linked to a colonial education system that led him from Vietnam, from the College of Quinhon to the Protectorate High School of Hanoi, then to Paris in 1938 [...] the very title of L'Homme de nulle part resonates like a fundamental question that will haunt his literary production for twenty years: what remains of identity when a subject is no longer anchored in a particular geographical - and by extension, cultural and linguistic - environment?) (Karl Ashoka Britto, Disorientation. France, Vietnam, and the Ambivalence of Interculturality).

Van Ky's works were illustrated by great artists from the Hanoi school, part of the first class of the École des Beaux-Arts de l'Indochine: Lê Ph?, who created the plate illustration for this work, and Mai Trung Th? who would create lithographs on silk for a series of his poems.