Papers
by Violaine Schwartz

translated from the French
by Christine Gutman

Available November 8, 2022
176 pages • $18
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Papers is a harrowing and enlightening portrayal of the modern refugee experience. Gathered here are the voices of asylum seekers from around the world who have risked their lives to make it to France and begun the often bewildering process of securing the right to stay. Related without melodrama or self-pity, their stories reflect the absurdity of bureaucracy, the agony of waiting, and the courageousness of leaving everything for an uncertain future. They are a testament to the brutality of war and corruption, an interrogation of the responsibility of citizens and nations, and a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit. A fearless, candid, compassionate book for our troubled global times. 

Violaine Schwartz is a French novelist, playwright, singer, and stage actor. Her novel Le Vent dans la bouche was awarded the 2013 Prix Eugène Dabit du Roman Populiste. In addition to writing and performing, she leads writing workshops in a variety of settings.

Christine Gutman is a Paris-based translator. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Papers is her debut literary translation.

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Read an excerpt from Papers.

It took me six months to get to Paris.
I passed through all the countries along the way.
First I stayed for a few months in Iran.
Then I went to Turkey, to Istanbul.
In each country, I had to pay to cross the border.
Then I took a boat to Greece.
It’s extremely dangerous, the current is very strong.
But you have to choose:
Stay where you are and suffer.
Or go to another country but maybe die on the way.
Maybe fall into the water.
You have to decide.
Yes or no.
I decided to take the risk.

Stunning—a masterful work of poetry and storytelling and a much-needed addition to the literature of displacement. Papers turned my most familiar narrative into breathtaking new art. I was utterly absorbed by the beauty and truth in these pages.

Dina Nayeri, author of The Ungrateful Refugee

I can hardly imagine a book more urgent and riveting, that speaks more to where we are today and to where we’re headed, than this devastating collage of voices from France’s refugees. It’s also wildly creative, a project born of passion and love. Absolutely crucial reading.

Deb Olin Unferth, author of Barn 8

Papers, one of the most extraordinary books I’ve ever read, is both a literary feat and an example of profound empathy. In their own words, we hear from the individuals whose stories are too often lost behind the vicious and inane labyrinth of the bureaucracies charged with handling “immigration policy.” We are introduced to a kaleidoscope of peoples and experiences, their stories building up and out to reveal a broader landscape of pain, disappointment, humor, and kindness, ultimately portraying the grave realities of this system as well as the victories that are possible if, and only if, we refuse to accept institutional and governmental indifference and bigotry.

Nafkote Tamirat, author of The Parking Lot Attendant

Devastating and full of strange miracles.

Olga Zilberbourg, author of Like Water and Other Stories

Meditative yet searing. […] Papers challenges conventional modes of understanding about displacement by foregrounding the words of displaced peoples themselves, giving shape to their journeys and representing, with unflinching clarity, the challenges they face.

Daniel Davies, Full Stop

Schwartz presents these stories in an innovative, absorbing way. They appear in a form that combines monologue and poetry. It feels “like” oral history but is more organized, lyrical, and spare. It has the sense of being both mediated and unmediated, edited and unedited, containing silences yet reaching to say the unsayable. Reading these people’s stories, you don’t feel shielded from what they’ve endured, nor do they feel like objects of the author’s manipulation, points to be scored in a debate. At the heart of Papers is a radical project of listening.

Michelle Kuo & Albert Wu, A Broad and Ample Road

Papers is a political work in the noblest sense of the term, a powerful and necessary text.

Sophie Joubert, L’Humanité

Schwartz evokes the newspeak of French bureaucracy, from OQTF (mandatory expulsion from French territory) to RATATA (official denial of asylum). In counterpoint to this dehumanizing language are the raw spoken words of these “modern epics,” accompanied here and there by a dose of caustic irony.

Laëtitia Giannechini, Le Monde des Livres

So many life stories, conveyed here faithfully, that prove to be often captivating, sometimes appalling, always moving.

Marianne Payot, L’Express

Schwartz deftly isolates those moments when despair rises to the surface, as the years go by with no hope of a solution. The concrete lucidity of her prose allows us to feel all the more deeply the Kafkaesque absurdity of [the asylum seekers’] situation. Without affectation, she plunges us into the heart of a system that has led to the creation of a parallel country, peopled by individuals reduced to numbers.

Sylvie Tanette, Les Inrockuptibles

To be recognized by France’s Ubuesque bureaucracy and escape deaths foretold, are they not often forced to fabricate proof of identity (that doesn’t exist in their country) and sometimes, over endlessly repeated hearings, sensational fates to better connect with their interlocutors? Where has their truth gone? The author and musician works their language like a threnody, respectfully. If all these stories are alike, no two have the same sound, the same tone. These are the tragic epic poems of the present day, and the author lends them dignity and heroism through the quality of her writing.

Fabienne Pascaud, Télérama