Painting Time: A Novel [Paperback]

Named a most anticipated book of 2021 byThe GuardianandThe Millions

An aesthetic and existential coming-of-age novel exploring the apprenticeship of a young female painter.

In Maylis de KerangalsPainting Time, we are introduced to the burgeoning young artist Paula Karst, who is enrolled at the famous Institut de Peinture in Brussels. Unlike the friends she makes at school, Paula strives to understand the specifics of what shes paintingreplicating a woods essence or a marbles wear requires method, technique, and talent, she finds, but also something else: craftsmanship. She resolutely chooses the painstaking demands of craft over the abstraction of high art.

With the attention of a documentary filmmaker, de Kerangal follows Paulas career, which is punctuated by brushstrokes, hard work, sleepless nights, sore muscles, and long, festive evenings. An enchanted and atmospheric coming-of-age novel,Painting Timeis an intimate and unsparing exploration of craft, inspiration, and the contours of the contemporary art world. As she did in her acclaimed novelsThe HeartandThe Cook, de Kerangal unravels a tightly wound professional world to reveal the beauty within.

Maylis de Kerangalis the author of several novels, includingNaissance dun pont(published in English asBirth of a Bridge), which won the Prix M?dicis in 2010;R?parer les vivants, whose U.S. English translation,The Heart, was one ofThe Wall Street Journals Top Ten Novels of 2016; andUn chemin de tables, whose English translation,The Cook, was aNew York Times Book ReviewEditors Choice. She lives in Paris.

Jessica Mooreis the author of the booksEverything, NowandThe Whole Singing Ocean. Her translation ofTurkana Boy, by Jean-Fran?ois Beauchemin, received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant, and her translation of Maylis de Kerangals