From A to X, novel by John Berger, first edition in 2008. Translated in French by Katya Berger Andreadakis for Éditions L’Olivier (2009).

Novel about love and resistance, From A to X is a powerful exploration of how humanity affirms itself in struggle: imagining a community which, besieged by economic and military imperialism, finds transcendent hope in the pain and fragility, vulnerability and sorrow of daily existence. Aida lives in a dusty ramshackle town. Everyday she writes to her lover Xavier, a rebel who has been imprisoned for his beliefs. She tells of daily events in the town, and of its motley collection of inhabitants whose lives flow through hers. But the area is under threat, and as a faceless power inexorably encroaches from outside. through the letters, the smallest details and acts of humanity are transformed into an intimate dance, an act of resistance against the forces that might otherwise extinguish them. What is threatened, and what will survive? In Berger’s exquisite prose, the fight for justice and beauty braid into a stunning work of defiant resistance.

« Nothingness is before and absence afterwards. At times it’s easy to confuse the two. »

« In the dark folds of time maybe there’s nothing except the dumb touch of our fingers. »

« Sleep is the first house, house without roof, walls or bed. They came later, inspired by sleep. Tonight I’m taking you, my love, into the first house. I slip it under the monstrous door and you’ll find  me inside it. »