The German publisher writes about the posthumously published work "Life Knots":
"Julien Gracq was the great loner of French literature, who became famous for his legendary rejection of the prestigious Prix Goncourt. When he died in 2007 at the age of 97, he decreed that his 29 books entitled "Marginal Notes" would not be published before 2027 - certainly out of consideration for contemporaries who appear in them. However, the estate contains another treasure to which no ban prevents us from accessing: The Life Knots, clear-sighted and witty observations on landscapes and mentalities, the fashions of the time, politics and history, literature, writing. They range from the sensual description of the Pays de la Loire to the explanation of the strange authority of farmers' rules to reflections on Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. And even in these texts, Gracq occasionally dishes out a lot, for example when he compares the English language to a can opener or the Switzerland is ironically described as "Europe's safe deposit box".
Gracq's linguistically stunning knots of life are an attempt to condense the perception of the world and to establish a close, sensual contact with it. They make you smile at the attacks of a pen as sharp as a sabre and marvel at the foresight of a man who foresees the development of the world from his balcony on the Loire."