In this brilliant and sobering self-portrait, Edouard Levé hides nothing from his readers, setting out his entire life, more or less at random, in a string of declarative sentences. Autoportrait is a physical, psychological, sexual, political, and philosophical triumph. Beyond "sincerity," Levé works toward an objectivity so radical it could pass for crudeness, triviality, even banality: the author has stripped himself bare. With the force of a set of maxims or morals, Levé's prose seems at first to be an autobiography without sentiment, as though written by a machine — until, through the accumulation of detail, and the author's dry, quizzical tone, we find ourselves disarmed, enthralled, and enraptured by nothing less than the perfect fiction. . made entirely of facts

Édouard Levé delivered the manuscript for his final book, Suicide, just a few days before he took his own life. Suicide cannot be read as simply another novel—it is, in a sense, the author’s own oblique, public suicide note, a unique meditation on this most extreme of refusals. Presenting itself as an investigation into the suicide of a close friend—perhaps real, perhaps fictional—more than twenty years earlier, Levé gives us, little by little, a striking portrait of a man, with all his talents and flaws, who chose to reject his life, and all the people who loved him, in favor of oblivion. Gradually, through Levé’s casually obsessive, pointillist, beautiful ruminations, we come to know a stoic, sensible, thoughtful man who bears more than a slight psychological resemblance to Levé himself. But Suicide is more than just a compendium of memories of an old friend; it is a near-exhaustive catalog of the ramifications and effects of the act of suicide, and a unique and melancholy farewell to life

Под одной обложкой впервые на русском языке печатаются два произведения яркой звезды французской художественной сцены, писателя, художника и фотографа Эдуара Леве (1965-2007). «Автопортрет» (2005) и опубликованное посмертно «Самоубийство» (2008) написаны с интервалом почти в три года, но на них стоит смотреть как на своеобразный диптих. «Самоубийство» вырастает из интонационно нейтрального, стилистически лаконичного и при этом шокирующе откровенного «Автопортрета», но идет уже по нарративному, «художественному» пути — перед нами биография вымышленного (ли?) друга автора. Обращаясь к нему, Леве пытается понять, почему тот предпочел отвергнуть свою жизнь, но, зная судьбу самого писателя, читатель этого романа поймет, что перед ним удивительный текст, тончайшая рефлексия на тему жизни и смерти того, кто выбрал смерть