Reading Garnier’s short novels side by side allows his profound and darkly comic tapestry of human experience to be fully appreciated. Volume 1 includes:

• The A26, in which a new Picardy motorway brings modernity close to a flat in which a brother and sister live together, haunted by terminal illness and the events of 1945;
• How’s the Pain?, the tale of an ageing ‘pest exterminator’ taking on one last job on the French Riviera;
• and The Panda Theory, in which a stranger, Gabriel, arrives in a Breton town and befriends the locals … but is he as angelic as he seems? Translated from the French by Melanie Florence and Emily Boyce. Original titles: L'A26 (Zulma, 1999) Comment va la douleur ? (Zulma, 2006) La Théorie du panda (Zulma, 2008) Exists also as ebook. ISBN: 9781910477618