“Then a plague plagued the city and some meddling oracle announced that the plague would never end, ever end unless the killer of the dead old king was found. 
They had no idea about viruses in those days. Plagues were sent from the gods.”
“They said that about AIDS. Even I knew it was a stupid thing to say and I’m no doctor.”
“One thing you notice about progress, kid, is that it doesn’t happen to everyone.”
Winterson’s book read for the “Roman De Rochefort” is a version of “The Winter’s Tale” set in the modern day but keeping the main drivers which are jealousy, pride, remorse and finally forgiveness. The two central characters in the initial actions of the book, Leontes, King of Sicilia and his childhood friend Polixenes, King of Bohemia are replaced by Leo Kaiser, a successful investment banker, an alpha male, “Men in Leo’s position had personal assistants who could moonlight as super models in their celery and cottage cheese lunch breaks”and by Xeno, a sensitive computer games writer who at school had had a homosexual relationship with Leo and to whom women were attracted:
Leo was playing ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and shouting at the console when Xeno came in and threw a banana skin at the screen.
“Hey!” said Leo. “What’s with you?”
“Gaming is the best technology mated with prehistoric levels of human development,” said Xeno. “It’s all cars, fights, theft, risk, girls and reward.”
Leo couldn’t see the problem. That was his real life exactly. Why should a game be any different?
“Women don’t play because it bores them,” said Xeno. “So that’s half your potential market gone”
Hermione, Leonte’s wife is replaced by Mimi a French American singer, songwriter who feels comfortable in the company of Xeno. The story follows closely the original with some interesting finds, Leonte spies on his wife and Xeno using webcams, Xeno goes far away to New Bohemia, a former French colony, and as everyone’s life is torn to pieces by the jealousy of Leo, jealousy for both Mimi and for Xeno, the baby, Perdita, is sent by Leo to New Bohemia where to save her life as the man bringing her is about to be robbed she is put in a hospital baby hatch with the money Leo had sent and, there, discovered by Shep, a black widower who then brings her up.
I’ll not bore you with a blow by blow description of the book, it follows the original story, just to say that redemption is reached through forgiveness as in the original and that there are some great one liners as in the original quote as Autolycus explains the story of Oedipus to Perdita’s stepbrother, Clo.
If you haven’t read or seen the Winter’s Tale, well then this is an easy modern telling, including some explanations about the transposition.
First Published in English as “The Gap of Time” in 2016 by Hogarth.
Translated into French by Céline Leroy and published as “La Faille du temps” in 2019 by Buchet-Chastel
The quotes in French
“Et voilà qu’un fléau s’abat sur la ville et qu’un oracle confus annonce que ça ne s’arrangera pas tant qu’on n’aura pas retrouvé le meurtrier du vieux roi.
Ils ne connaissaient rien aux virus à l’époque. Pour eux, la peste était une punition des dieux.”
“Ils ont aussi dit ça du SIDA. Même moi je sais que c’est débile, et pourtant je suis pas médecin”
“Le truc avec le progrès, gamin, c’est qu’il n’arrive pas à tout le monde”.
Les hommes de la stature de Leo avaient des assistantes personnelles qui travaillaient au noir comme top-modèles pendant leur pause déjeuner à base de céleri et de fromage zéro pour-cent.
Leo jouait à ‘Grand Theft Auto’ et hurlait après la console quand eno entra dans la pièce et envoya une peau de banane sur l’écran.
“Hého! Qu’est-ce qui te prend?”fit Leo.
“Le gaming, c’est le meilleur de la technologie allié à un stade préhistorique du développement humain”, rétorqua Xeno. “On n’y trouve que des voitures, de la violence, du vol, du risque, des filles et des récompenses.”
Leo ne voyait pas de problème. C’était la copie conforme de sa vie. Pourquoi un jeu vidéo devrait-il être différent?
“Les femmes ne jouent pas parce qu’elles s’ennuient. On perd donc une moitié du marché potentiel.”
South of Paris books 