Le cas Annunziato by Yan Gauchard (review)

Gauchard, Yan. Le cas Annunziato. Paris: Minuit, 2016. ISBN 978-2-7073-2927-1. Pp. 125. 12,50 a. Andy Warhol famously stated that “everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.”This notoriety turns out to be a bit too long for Fabrizio Annunziato, whose “case” is the subject of this novel. As the result of a practical joke gone awry, he finds himself imprisoned in Florence’s Museo nazionale di San Marco. Specifically in the monastery cell once graced by Fra Angelico. Due to her father’s sudden death, the woman who locked him in forgets to return to free him. Fabrizio will spend nine days in the cell whose only ornaments are two frescos by the thirteenth-century master. There is also a lucarne which rapidly becomes a food conduit, since across from the convent lives the very attractive Raphaëlla who befriends the young man, and keeps him nourished by periodically pitching fruit from her apartment window into his cell. Fabrizio is also not without intellectual stimulation. In his knapsack he has a translation he was working on for a French press. Although he was making slow progress with the task, it turns out that “le travail minutieux de traducteur” is greatly facilitated by “la vie monastique” (57). As a result he has essentially finished his work at the time of his liberation.Yet at first his experience of freedom is rocky. Because the year is 2002, and Italy remains traumatized by the memory of the Red Brigades, a nervousness fueled by the Cavaliere in his role as Prime Minister, Fabrizio is initially imagined to be some sort of “radical red.” Circumstances encourage this suspicion; a deceased half-brother was a militant, and someone had slipped a leftist manifesto into his knapsack. However, these misgivings rapidly disappear as Fabrizio’s adventure captures the national imagination; he is proclaimed a hero.When asked what he would most wish for in Italy, the still weak translator asks to return to his monastery cell. The museum director quickly seizes the prestige possibilities of this request, and turns his establishment into an Italian version of France’s Villa Médicis in Rome, a place where artists can live and work for a fixed period. Fabrizio also profits. He has a fantasy erotic encounter with the young woman who projected his food to him, and a real one with the older woman who had locked him in the cell. Due to his sudden fame, the book he translated will appear with his name in bigger print than the author’s, and the political manifesto will also appear in France in the same format.Yet Fabrizio is uneasy with all this attention, so one day he abandons Fra Angelico’s cell and takes off for parts unknown. Perhaps he is heading back to France, or maybe he is just in search of a quieter, less public monastery. In Le cas Annunziato, Yan Gauchard has produced an engaging divertissement that darkens slightly at the end without, however, losing the lightness of tone so characteristic of this novel. Florida State University, emeritus William Cloonan 206 FRENCH REVIEW 90.3 ...