“Absurd, thrilling, and wickedly funny, Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès’s rollicking Island of Point Nemo is a wildly inventive novel that crosses continents and oceans and literary styles and genres, attempting to find a narrow path between two entertaining though disparate storylines. Drawing inspiration from classic storytellers like Jules Verne and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Blas de Roblès blends mystery, science fiction, crime, and satire, to craft an accomplished, extraordinary tale that swings and leaps between vintage action-adventure involving a trio of detectives in search of a stolen diamond, and modern-day satire focused on the boss of a manufacturing plant and his unhealthy obsession with the workers.
This is the ninth novel by Algerian-born Blas de Roblès, author of the critically acclaimed Where Tigers Are at Home, which won the Prix Médicis in 2008 and was short-listed for the Goncourt Prize and the European Book Award. Originally published in 2014 in France, Island of Point Nemo has been translated into English for the first time by Hannah Chute.”
Nicholas Litchfield’s review of Blas de Roblès’ Island of Point Nemo is published in The Colorado Review.