UK reviews:
‘The brilliance of Fellous’s book lies in the vivid imagery and the intimacy of her self-examination. (…) it has a sense of immediacy that I found very appealing.’ — Vertigo
'An elegiac farewell to Tunisia; to Mediterranean life, its peoples, and markets of yesteryear . . . the Madonna’s procession in La Goulette, the open-air cinema in Kram, the smell of peaches, the house in Sidi-Bou-Saïd . . . This Tilting World is an extremely beautifully written and deftly translated visual and linguistic magic carpet woven with the threads of memory, loss and love. It is at once personal, political and cultural. Poetic, evocative and subtle, the visual, lyrical narrative radiates calm and serenity as the author reminisces, grieves and lets go. Exquisite small black and white photos are scattered throughout the text adding to the fragmented whole. Ultimately, the question I pondered on finishing was: for an exile, what are the roots of identity?' —Bookblast
US reviews:
‘‘“So this is my life,” Fellous writes. “I’m completely exhausted. I don’t know what to do, I cant sleep, I’m mortally afraid, my life is shot to pieces. And my children know nothing of my past. I wanted to explain it in a little private book…. A book is precious; that’s why I thought of you.” A meditative nonfiction horror story on the North African coast, This Tilting World crashes over the reader in waves.’ — Nate McNamara, Lit Hub
‘Written with verve and an elegiac tone, Fellous’s book charts unexpected historical places and finds a deep emotional resonance.’ — Vol. 1 Brooklyn
‘‘This haunting, elegaic book is told in fragments, reflecting the many shattered aspects of our world. This Tilting World is part of a trilogy on the Jewish communities of Tunisia, and it begins in 2015, following a terrorist attack at the resort in Sousse, during which more than 80 tourists were murdered. It's a story of tragedies, both global and personal, serving as something of a creative memoir for Fellous, in which she interrogates her relationship to losing her home country, but also her relationship with her father, with friends, with her art. Fellous' writing is lyrical, but muscular, never afraid to go to the prickly places within her memory and emotions.’ — Nylon
‘This slim, meditative novel is, in part, a love letter to a homeland to which her narrator must never return. Drawing upon the 2015 terrorist attack in Sousse, Tunisia, Fellous gives voice to those who are too often silenced in her haunting and prescient book.’ — Observer (USA)
On Colette Fellous's This Tilting World and John Engelhardt's debut novel Bloomland: 'Neither rings truer than the other. Fellous’s bottomless sorrow about the randomness with which the world breaks our hearts is no less realistic than Bloomland’s assessment that a mass shooting “only changes the world for a moment, the same way that snow falling at night can be gone in the morning.” Each book has such personality that only the most stoic of readers will not prefer one over the other. But both offer beautifully shaped insight on the violence that increasingly invades our lives.' — Book & Film Globe
French reviews:
‘Fragments: the result of dispersion, of destruction perhaps – but also the indispensable ingredients for a promise of reparation. This duality lies at the heart of the final volume of Colette Fellous’s work of remembrance… Faced with hopeless violence, the eye remains alert and leads the frontline for the gentleness which Colette Fellous learnt from Barthes, so that the moment of hiatus is calm and bright – a redemption. This book interrogates our reaction in the face of a world in shreds.’ — Le Monde Des Livres
Further praise for This Tilting World
Selected for Entropy’s August and September: Small Press Releases
Chosen as part of Unabridged Bookstore’s September book club selections
Further praise for Colette Fellous
‘Beyond the sadness and the loss, is a great seductive energy – we are drawn by a wish to live and to learn – and Fellous’s inimitable way of regarding the world.’ — Madame Figaro (for Un amour de frère)
‘Without nostalgic yearning, lithe and fluid in her way of capturing the coruscating nature of words, Fellous weaves past and present into a labyrinth of a book in which she shares her passions: writing, tuning herself to the world and untangling with relish the threads of reality and of thought.’ — Le Magazine Littéraire (for La préparation de la vie)
‘Like a true disciple of Barthes, Colette Fellous works in fragments which she stiches together with infinite delicacy, inlaying the fabric of the text with black and white photographs, embroidering its surface with precious details; a sensual constellation of memories, colours and scents… The self as a fragment becomes an art, elegant and sensitive, as Colette Fellous returns to the vestiges of the past.’ — Les Inrockuptibles (for La préparation de la vie)
UK reviews:
Journeys from your sofa: 10 great travel book gifts for Christmas, Robert Hull, The Guardian, 3 December 2019
Best books of 2019: Fiction in translation, Ángel Gurría-Quintana, Financial Times, 22 November 2019
Lament for a world out of kilter, Amanda Hopkinson, Jewish Chronicle, 11 October 2019
Small press, David Collard, Idler - issue 68, September/October 2019
On Release Books in Translation, Antonia Charlesworth, Big Issue North, 23 Sepember 2019
Surfacing, Kathleen Jamie; This Tilting World, Colette Fellous, Dani Garavelli, The Big Issue, 13 September 2019
Shards of memory: Colette Fellous, This Tilting World, Helen Vassalo, Translating Women, 17 September 2019
Review | This Tilting World, Colette Fellous trs. Sophie Lewis | Book of the Week, Bookblast, 8 September 2019
Review: Paul Crick on This Tilting World by Colette Fellous, translated by Sophie Lewis, Paul Crick, Onomatomania, 27 August 2019
US reviews:
Best Books from 2020, Vertigo, 10 December 2020
This Tilting World, Vertigo, 20 July 2020
This Tilting World, Martin Green, Jewish Book Council, 30 December 2019
On Release Books in Translation, Antonia Charlesworth, Big Issue North, 23 September 2019
Small press, David Collard, Idler - issue 68, September/October 2019