Photography-Embedded Fiction 2005

Here is my listing of works of fiction and poetry published during the year 2005 which contain embedded photographs as part of the textual matter. You can see all of my previous lists here.   If you know of a book that I have overlooked, please let me know in a comment.  [Originally posted November 25, 2012.]

Eco, Umberto.  The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana.  NY: Harcourt.  A translation by Geoffrey Brock from the original Italian edition of 2004.  Eco’s book is filled with scores of images drawn from popular culture, such as book covers, movie stills & posters, postage stamps, comic books, to name just some of the sources.

Foer, Jonathan Safran.  Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.  NY: Houghton Mifflin.  Fifty-two photographs and plus a few other illustrations are distributed throughout the novel.  Some are attributed to Debra Meltzer, Christopher Moisan, and Anne Chalmers, while some remain unattributed.  The book closes with a sequence of  the famous”falling man” photographs from 9/11, but here the order is reversed so that the figure rises in space.

Huelle, Pawel.  Mercedes-Benz.  London: Serpent’s Tail.  First English-language edition.  Translated from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones.  First published in Poland in 2003,  this is a paean to the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, written in the form of a series of letters to Hrabal as the author takes driving lessons in Gdansk.  Previous family-owned cars provide the structure for telling family stories that span much of twentieth-century Poland.  Contains seven vintage snapshots that appear to be of the author’s own family, along with one reproduction of a vintage Gevaert film advertisement.

Mazzucco, Melania G.  Vita: A Novel.  New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.  Contains family photographs as well as archival photographs from Italian collections.  This English translation by Virginia Jewiss is the first English-language edition of Vita, which was originally published in Italy in 2003.  You can see my previous post on this book here.

Rawle, Graham.  Woman’s World: A Novel.  London: Atlantic Books.  A novel constructed entirely of collaged elements from 1960s women’s magazines, including many photographs.

Rodenbach, Georges.  Bruges-la-Morte.  Cambridgeshire: Dedalus.  Originally published in 1892, Rodenbach’s photograph-laden fin de siecle symbolist novel continues to draw readers.  This new translation by Mike Mitchell and Will Stone replaces the original nineteenth century photographs with new ones by Will Stone, suggesting, among other things, that Bruges has changed little.  This edition also has an Introduction by British novelist Alan Hollinghurst.  You can see my several posts on Rodenbach’s book and its legacy here.