Passionfruit

Quintessential Pennac; readers of his novels will find here the wry prose and wittily inventive plotting that characterise his fiction.

Daniel Pennac was born in Casablanca in 1944, his father being in the army. He travelled widely in his youth, in Europe, Asia and Africa, and has been employed in a number of capacities, including woodcutter, Paris cab driver, illustrator and schoolteacher. His "Belleville Quintet", written round the character of Benjamin Malaussene has been published in many languages.

Benjamin Malaussène and family are far from happy when his fortune teller younger sister Thérèse marries the aristocratic Count Marie-Colbert de Roberval at a televised wedding – a ceremony from which Marie-Colbert has unceremoniously banned the madcap Malaussène clan. Two days later, Thérèse turns up in Paris’s Belleville quarter back early from their honeymoon, only to narrowly escape death as her fairground caravan is mysteriously torched to the ground. 
 
When that same day his sister Thérèse’s husband is found dead at the foot of his luxury apartment’s stairwell, Benjamin Malaussène, professional scapegoat, packs his bags ready for the police to haul him off. 
 
Only it’s Thérèse the police arrest when she refuses to disclose her whereabouts the night of her husband’s murder. Without her alibi – which might have something to do with her sudden pregnancy – it’s over to Benjamin to save the day. Family and friends join forces to leave no corner of Paris unturned in their search for the true culprit.

Write To Kill

A charming and mysterious novel, sure to grip the imagination from cover to cover.

Daniel Pennac was born in Casablanca in 1944, his father being in the French colonial service. He spent his youth travelling widely in Europe, Asia and Africa, and has been employed in a number of capacities, including woodcutter, Paris cab driver, illustrator and schoolteacher. His novels (five to date) written round the character of Benjamin Malaussène, the professional scapegoat, have been published in many languages. He has also written - from his experience of teaching children - a book which has been published in English as Reads Like a Novel.

Benjamin Malaussène is a downtrodden publisher at Vendetta Press. Treated as a scapegoat by Queen Zabo, doyenne of publishing, he finally resigns, only for Zabo to offer him a starring role. All he has to do is to impersonate the world's best-loved, but hitherto anonymous author, J.L.B.

Monsieur Malaussene

Continuing in the tradition of the first four, highly acclaimed novels of the "Belleville Quintet" this is a slick and funny thriller with fast-paced action and larger-than-life characters.

DANIEL PENNAC was born in Casablanca in 1944, his father being in the army.  He travelled widely in his youth, in Europe, Asia and Africa, and has been employed in a number of capacities, including woodcutter, Paris cab driver, illustrator and schoolteacher.  His "Belleville Quintet", written round the character of Benjamin Malaussène, has been published in many languages.

Benjamin Malaussène, the Belleville scapegoat, and his family of half sisters and brothers are once again the target for a series of increasingly catastrophic mishaps which culminate in his imprisonment on 21 counts of murder.  Meanwhile, the real serial killer remains at large. In this sprawling novel, which brings the Belleville Quintet to a close, Pennac has allowed his unique imagination to run riot.  The result is an increasingly huge cast of unforgettable characters and a series of inter-related plot lines which curl around one another before finally unravelling.  From the art of the tattoo to cinema history, and the intricacies of cutting-edge surgery to the wonders of the wines of Jura, there is something for everyone in this extraordinary tale.

The Dictator And The Hammock

Highly amusing and original. Daniel Pennac is a fantastic storyteller - Andrey Kurkov, author of Death and The Penguin

The wealth of subsidiary narratives - all the impeccably crafted anecdotes and myths and allegories, stories large and small...produce a sophisticated reading experience and suggest a writer whose political view is amused and tart.  They are so good, these stories, and so intelligently amusing, and they arrive so frequently, that we never have time to think of asking for more

Patricia Clancy's beautifully tuned ear has given us the full equivalent of Pennac's French humour, half erudite clowning and half absurdist whimsy. His style, seemingly offhand, is studiously exact and Clancy respectfully follows his precisely scripted convolutions

His adult fiction retains a childlike quality, existing in an imaginary realm where childhood and adulthood blur; reminiscent of Italo Calvino

A darkly comic meditation on life, death and the illusions of power

Daniel Pennac was born in Casablanca in 1944, his father being in the army. He travelled widely in his youth, in Europe, Asia and Africa, and has been employed in a number of capacities, including woodcutter, Paris cab driver, illustrator and schoolteacher. His 'Belleville Quintet', written round the character of Benjamin Malaussène has been published in many languages.

Manuel Pereira da Ponte Martins, beloved dictator of the state of Teresina in Brazil, develops agoraphobia the day a fortune-teller predicts he will die being torn limb from limb by an angry mob. His life becomes unbearable and he decides to hire a double to stand in while he set off to enjoy himself in the fleshpots of Europe. 
 
A few years later, the barber-turned-dictator also grows tired of running the country and employs the same trick as his predecessor to leave for Hollywood. On the boat there, he introduces himself as Charlie Chaplin. But everyone is convinced that he is none other than Rudolph Valentino disguised as Chaplin. When he arrives in New York, both the real actors are waiting for him. 
 
Back in Teresina, the doubles follow one another, fooling the people with ease. Then Pereira comes back. He is astonished to discover that his stand-in doesn't look anything like him and reacts in a way that can only precipitate his meeting with Fate. 
 
The Dictator and The Hammock is wildly original and extremely funny.

Fairy Gunmother

A gloriously comic tale of blunder and disguise, set in the vibrant Parisian quarter of Belleville.

These are...classic page-turners, in which the loyalty and decency of ordinary (and not so ordinary) people contrive to vanquish villains and tyrants

Already a bestseller in its native country, it deserves to be one here if there's any justice in the world of crime

There is only profit and pleasure to be had in this wise, good-humoured, funny book

A crime novel in a class of its own, you'll laugh till you cry

Daniel Pennac was born in Casablanca in 1944, his father being in the army. He travelled widely in his youth, in Europe, Asia and Africa, and has been employed in a number of capacities, including woodcutter, Paris cab driver, illustrator and schoolteacher. His "Belleville Quintet", written round the character of Benjamin Malaussène, has been published in many languages.

A policeman on a mission of mercy is shot dead at point-blank range by a sweet old granny on a frosty morning. The neighbourhood, Paris's bubbling Belleville quarter, is already in uproar because half a dozen other grannies have been found with their shrivelled throats slit. Into this tense situation stumbles Benjamin Malaussène with an overly complicated life that includes his voluptuous red-haired girlfriend, Julie, and his smelly epileptic dog, Julius. Maniacally inventive - some have called it deranged - Pennac's creations in The Fairy Gunmother have achieved cult status all over Europe.

Daniel Pennac

Pathetic, contrite and hapless, Benjamin is nonetheless the scapegoat at The Store: there is nothing for which he cannot be blamed. While his blunders remain minor, most of his unwitting victims can find it in their hearts to forgive him, but when violent explosions begin to follow him around, he inevitably becomes the prime suspect. With his girlfriend Julie by his side, Benjamin thrusts himself into uncovering the mystery, delving deep into underground Paris and pursuing the truth through a maze of bizarre criminality and oppressive shadows.

Scapegoat

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