Zenith Hotel

Description

I m a street prostitute. Not a call girl or anything. No, a real street whore, with stiletto heels and menthol cigarettes. Narrator Nanou gives a detailed account of her day, from the moment she wakes up with a foul taste in her mouth, in her sordid rented room, until the minute she crawls back into her bed at night to sleep. Interwoven with her story are portraits of her clients. Oscar Coop-Phane invents an astonishing cast of original and deeply human characters losers, defeated by the world around them who seek solace in Nanou s arms. Original and moving, this short book deftly paints a world of solitude and sadness, illuminated by precious moments of tenderness and acts of kindness.

Oscar Coop-Phane was born in 1988. He left home at 16 with dreams of becoming a painter and at 20 moved to Berlin where he spent a year writing and reading classics. There he wrote Zenith Hotel and then Tomorrow, Berlin (Arcadia, 2015). He now lives in Brussels, where he is working on his next novel.

"The novel unfolds with a sympathetic clarity that refuses to shy away from both the harsh realities of life and the bits of gentleness and hope that can be found among the shadows." -- World Lit. Today "World Lit. Today"