The debut novel of a French train driver

“Mattia Filice's book reveals a style—the style of a writer unlike any other. He takes you on a spirited ride into the universe of rails, leaving one with an indelible vision of the contemporary condition of the working class.” —La tribune de Genève DRIVER Mattia Filice Translated from the French by Jacques Houis Driver is a book about a young man from the provinces who moves to Paris and studies to become a train driver. As he learns about trains and their intricate workings, he is transported into a world in constant motion, with its own laws and codes and specialized language, its own heroes and legends and manifold dangers. Written in a style as surprising and eclectic as a night on the rails—packed with inside jokes and allusions that extend from Arthur Rimbaud to hip-hop and beyond—Driver takes us deep into the world of the train, until it becomes, like the ship in Moby-Dick, a microcosm of the world at large. Drawing on twenty years of experience driving trains, Mattia Filice writes memorably about solitude and sleepless nights in the cab, accidents and breakdowns, but also about the lives and personalities of his fellow workers and the conversations and solidarity they share, both on the job and on the picket line, in what is a continual struggle to improve the conditions of work. Unsentimental yet full of feeling, Driver is both an unusual and formally adventurous novel about labor and life and a stirring ode to the power of the collective. BUY THE BOOK   A London event for Driver with Mattia Filice Thursday, November 20, at 7pm GMT Institut français du Royaume-Uni 17 Queensberry Pl, South Kensington, London SW7 2DT Conversation with Ben Faccini Get tickets here You are receiving this message because you signed up for email newsletters from NYRB. You can choose the types of mailings you wish to receive: Update preferences   New York Review Books 207 East 32nd Street New York, NY 10016-6305 Not a subscriber? Sign up for our newsletter here. Unsubscribe