François Angot

François Angot lives and works in Paris. A l'étale is a poem of 550 pages, divided in twelve parts. Even if its first version was written in six months, François Angot worked on it during twenty years before completing it. The published extract is taken from the 8th part.

In French, l'étale stands for a moment of the tide, when the sea gets slack; then, the tension gives way to a quiet moment during which everything becomes smoother and clearer. In A l'étale, this smoothness and this clearness are that of a mystery which gets deeper as it gets clearer, and which therefore is perhaps even more captivating than the plot of a novel.