52 Serial Shorts - The Complete Collection

“Truly fun, dark humor guaranteed.” – 5-star Amazon.fr review

“Fifty-two sharp-toothed stories with carnivorous intentions and limitless inspiration. You dive into them without ever losing the thread (of the suture). A delicious meal with the lions.” – Paris Match

Beware! Writers on the loose.

Seven of France’s top authors got together to play a collaborative writing game resulting in fifty-two wacky stories. They each wrote an episode, passing it on to the other, and so forth, until all seven had contributed to each story. They set traps, had fun, and used their prowess to continue and conclude each story. The result is this collection of short stories: some are zany, some are clever, some are just plain weird, but all show the incredible creative skill of these seven very fine writers.

It is surrealistic, literally. This kind of collaborative writing–what could be more in line with the times?–dates back to a writing game invented by the French Surrealists in about 1925, called cadavres exquis. The direct translation is delightfully morbid: exquisite (or delicious, if you prefer) corpses. These corpses are not, in fact, decaying bodies, but entertaining seven-author stories that showcase true writing skill, mixing the styles, feelings and predilections of each author.