On the Ceiling tells the story of a young man who wears a chair upside down on his head. He falls in love with a young woman named Méline, and soon he and his friends move in with her and her family. They are disappointed by the life they find at Méline’s, however, and in search of something better they make the collective decision to move to the ceiling of her house, where they expect to find a more orderly, more rational, and less encumbered existence.

Éric Chevillard’s trademark is inventing characters who have little choice but to dream up the most hopelessly outlandish and breathtakingly brilliant schemes if they are to survive the rigors of their existence. He is fascinated by the imperious need we all feel to make life bearable and by the lengths to which we are willing to go in that pursuit. The characters in On the Ceiling are prepared to go rather further than most of us. Chevillard, one of the most inventive young authors on the French literary scene, is the author of eight novels.

Jordan Stump is associate professor of French at the University of Nebraska. He is the author of Naming and Unnaming: On Raymond Queneau and the translator of four novels by Marie Redonnet—Hôtel Splendid, Forever Valley, Rose Mellie Rose, and Nevermore—and of Éric Chevillard’s The Crab Nebula and Patrick Modiano’s Out of the Dark (all available from the University of Nebraska Press).

"In the tradition of Ionesco or Jarry, Chevillard, one of the bright spots in recent French literature, is at his absurdist best in this surreal fable. . . . Chevillard's surprising, skillful prose and bizarre humor focus on life's stranger possibilities, allowing readers to see things from a distinctly different perspective."—Publishers Weekly

"Both logic and conventional romantic and family relations are blithely subverted in this droll 1997 fable by Chevillard, the popular French author whose earlier novel, The Crab Nebula (1998) also appeared in English translation. . . . Ezra Pound, who urged artists to 'make it new,' might have detected a rare (and rarefied) kindred spirit in the waggish—and alarmingly inventive—M. Chevillard."—Kirkus Reviews