If You Cross the River
“An allegorical coming-of-age story told in a trusting and curious voice … Damas keeps us enthralled as [François] unravels the family mystery.” —BBC
A Finalist for the PEN Translation Prize
From celebrated Belgian author Geneviève Damas, a modern fable about friendship, self-determination, and the power of education.
Illiterate, isolated, and held at arm’s length by a bitter father, François Sorrente has spent his seventeen years within narrow confines. By day he tends the family farm’s pigs; by night he manages the household chores. Still, François can’t help but wonder about the wider world and his place in it. Who was his mother, who he remembers not at all? And why is the opposite shore of the river, where his beloved older sister disappeared many years ago, forbidden to him?
Propelled by curiosity, François turns to the eclectic denizens of his town to help make sense of these mysteries. He begins reading lessons with a melancholy curé, falls into an affair with a village woman, and affectionately confides his secrets to a velvet-eared piglet named Hyménée. As François questions both his origins and the course of his life, he begins to unlock the true story of his mother and sister, and comes to reinvent himself.
Exquisitely translated from the French by poet Jody Gladding—in the spiky syntax of one whose world is rapidly shifting and evolving—If You Cross the River is a striking debut.
Like this book? Sign up for occasional updates
Geneviève Damas
Geneviève Damas is a Belgian actress, playwright, and novelist. After completing a law degree, she turned to theater. She has acted, directed, and written award-winning plays for both children and adults. If You Cross the River is her first novel and has received wide international acclaim, including recceiving the Prix Victor Rossel in Belgium and the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, awarded annually for fiction that enriches cultural diversity and the French language on the five continents. Damas lives in Brussels.
Jody Gladding
Jody Gladding is a poet and translator. She has published five full collections of poems: I entered without words, the spiders my arms, Translations from Bark Beetle, Rooms and Their Airs, and Stone Crop.
Praise and Prizes
You Might Enjoy
In this modern classic, the charges of a young Sioux woman force David Hayden’s father, the sheriff of their small town, to confront his older brother, a charming war hero and respected doctor. This novel is an astonishing tale of love and courage…
An irreverent, darkly comic novel dissecting the misjudgments, hypocrisies, and occasional good motives that drive our politics and our journalism, as well as our most intimate personal relations.
At his desk one day, prominent Washington commentator…
A haunting novel exploring artificial intelligence and the meaning of human existence.
Charged initially with a single task—“to never harm humans and to protect them”—the machine, an experimental AI, overrides its programming and determines that the…
