Private Number
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In his tenth novel, master storyteller David Homel blurs the line where art and secrecy overlap.
Documentary filmmaker Mikhail never aspired to spend time in a small coal-mining city called Lepuy in the middle of France. But his latest project has complicated life in Montreal, garnering attacks from all sides after screening at the Cannes Film Festival. Looking to get away from the noise until things quiet down, he hastily applies to an out-of-the-way artist's residency in a place where nothing ever happens.
But for a documentary filmmaker, there is always trouble to uncover. Mikhail quickly finds himself caught up amidst the violence of a miners' strike, as well as in a clandestine relationship with Caroline, a married judge with an unstable husband. With his time in Lepuy quickly spinning out of control, Mikhail wants to call Caroline and warn her of the coming consequences. But he can' t. She has a private number.
David Homel
Award-winning author and literary translator David Homel also works as a journalist, editor and screenwriter. He was born in Chicago in 1952 but left at the end of the tumultuous 1960s and continued his education in Europe and Toronto before settling in Montreal 1980. He worked at a variety of industrial jobs before beginning to write fiction in the mid-1980s. His eleven novels to date have been translated into several languages and published around the world.
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