Yasmina Reza publishes new novel in France

Yasmina Reza, the Tony Award-winning French dramatist whose stage hits include “Art” and “God of Carnage,” has a new work out this month but it isn’t a play.

Reza has published a new novel in France titled “Heureux les Heureux.” The 190-page book follows 18 different characters and is structured as a series of monologues. The title, which can be roughly translated to “Happy Are the Happy,” is a quote from Jorge Luis Borges’s “Fragments from an Apocryphal Gospel.”

The novel has received enthusiastic reviews in France. Its contemporary characters include a journalist, an actress, a doctor and a kid who thinks he is Céline Dion. Their lives intersect in unexpected ways, revealing nuances of happiness and misery.

“Heureux” isn’t Reza’s first novel. She has also published “Desolation” and “Adam Haberberg,” both of which have been translated into English.

Reza’s plays “Art” and “God of Carnage” both won Tony Awards during their Broadway runs.

“God of Carnage” transferred to the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in 2011, with its original Broadway cast consisting of James Gandolfini, Marcia Gay Harden, Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels. Reza also co-wrote the screen adaptation of “God of Carnage” with director Roman Polanski.

Her most recent play is “How You Talk the Game,” which has already been published in book form in France. The play debuted in October in Berlin at the Deutsches Theater.

“How You Talk the Game” tells the story of a female writer who travels to the French provinces to promote her latest book. Some images from the Berlin production have been posted online (link in German).

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