Alex Landragin is a
writer whose fiction explores place, migration and literature's formal
potential. He has also worked as a copywriter, travel writer,
journalist, librarian, indigenous community worker, wine merchant and musician.
Landragin was born in France and migrated to Australia as a child. He has previously resided in Marseille, Alice Springs, Paris, New Orleans, Los Angeles and Washington DC. He currently lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Landragin's debut novel, Crossings, has three narratives:
The first story in Crossings is a never-before-seen ghost story by the poet Charles Baudelaire, penned for an illiterate girl. Next is a noir romance about an exiled man, modeled on Walter Benjamin, whose recurring nightmares are cured when he falls in love with a storyteller who draws him into a dangerous intrigue of rare manuscripts, police corruption, and literary societies. Finally, there are the fantastical memoirs of a woman-turned-monarch whose singular life has spanned seven generations.Here Landragin dreamacasts an adaptation of the novel:
Most of the characters in Crossings appear more than once at different stages of their lives, so until they perfect the technology the movie - or better yet the series - probably can't be made.Visit Alex Landragin's website.
But a dream cast would go something like this:
Alula - Auli'i Cravalho
Koahu - James Rolleston
Joubert - Willem Dafoe
Roblet - Sam Neill
Feuille - Philip Seymour Hoffman
Jeanne - Thandie Newton
Baudelaire - Steve Buscemi
Edmonde - anyone, as a mask is required
Mehevi - Temuera Morrison
Mathilde - Olivia Colman
Balthazar - Adrien Brody
Artopoulos - Stephen Fry
Madeleine - Maggie Cheung
Walter - Ed Norton
Chanel - Eva Green
Massu - Ben Whishaw
The Page 69 Test: Crossings.
Q&A with Alex Landragin.
--Marshal Zeringue