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In late 1989, as the Eastern Bloc collapses and money begins moving across borders as never before, a young banker and a small-time hustler fall in love in the most discreet city in the world — and decide that love alone is not enough. Svetlana is a brilliant, ambitious analyst on the rise at a private bank in Geneva. Aldo is a tennis coach whose real trade is best left unexamined. Attraction becomes partnership, then appetite: for money, power, and the recognition money is supposed to buy. Inspired by a real Geneva embezzlement case and a real 1990 bank heist, Consumed follows two lovers who help themselves to the fortunes flowing through the city's banks — a “Genevan Bonnie and Clyde,” as one French critic called them. Prize-winning and internationally acclaimed, Joseph Incardona channels the savage wit of Martin Amis's Money and the cool dread of DeLillo's White Noise into a modern tragedy about a world where everything, and everyone, has a price. In the world of finance, love has never been a safe-haven currency.
“Dry, stripped-back prose, sentences that crack like a whip, words that burn and freeze.” — Alexandra Schwartzbrod, Libération
“Incardona captures the reader with the weapons of the thriller, then smuggles in a profound and ambitious novel... Not far from the satirical darkness of a Houellebecq.” — Stéphanie Dupays, Le Monde
“A masterful novel that leaves you stunned, shaken.” — Bernard Lehut, RTL
“More than a fresco, a contemporary epic. Dark, sharp, poetic.” — Salomé Kiner, Le Temps
“A cadenced, fast, grinding prose. Luxury, lies, voluptuousness... A fresco of greed and the ferocious commodification of the world.” — Christine Ferniot, Télérama
“A language that plays with all registers, all genres.” — Christophe Ono-dit-Biot, France Culture
“Incardona is the missing link between Westlake and Manchette.” — Hubert Artus, Lire
“A masterpiece of dark lyricism and sensuous hardness, a compendium of human greed and fragility, an unforgettable love story.” — Isabelle Falconnier, Le Matin
“A prodigious, addictive novel of absolute darkness... Merciless, unforgettable.” — Delphine Peras, L'Express
“A magnificent love story... I stopped everything to read this book to the end.” — Gérard Collard, Sud Radio
“One of our ten favourite novelists. Virtuoso.” — Valérie Gans, Madame Figaro
Author Joseph Incardona was born in Geneva in 1969 to a Sicilian father and a Swiss mother. One of the most distinctive voices in contemporary French-language fiction, he is the author of more than a dozen novels spanning literary noir, satire, and social fresco, and has also written for theatre and film. Consumed (La soustraction des possibles) is his most celebrated novel, winner of five major French prizes and widely compared to Houellebecq, Manchette, and Martin Amis. Bitter Lemon Press previously published his novel Holy F*ck, also translated by Sam Taylor.
Translator Sam Taylor is one of the leading literary translators from French working today. Born in Nottinghamshire, England, in 1970, he began his career as a journalist with The Observer before turning to translation; he has translated more than seventy books, including works by Michel Houellebecq, Laurent Binet, and Leïla Slimani. He previously translated Incardona's Holy F*ck for Bitter Lemon Press