Abounding Freedom

Author: Julien Gracq

Translator: Alice Yang

Publisher: World Poetry Books (2024)

Celebrated French novelist Julien Gracq’s only book of poetry presented with “The Road,” a contemporaneous piece of poetic prose, in a new translation by Alice Yang. Written over a twenty-year span, the dense, lyrical prose poems of Abounding Freedom illuminate the hidden lives of places as they take us into the workings of the imagination itself. This collection opens a door onto the evolution of Gracq’s work, from his early surrealist experiments to the more grounded evocations of land- and cityscapes that characterize his mature prose. Upon its original publication, Rene Char called Abounding Freedom a "miracle." The present edition includes “The Road,” a fragment of an unfinished novel that extends the narrative tendencies of Gracq’s later poetry.