The Travels of Daniel Ascher

A sensation in France, this is a story about literary deceptions, family secrets, and a thrilling quest for the truth

Who is the real author of The Black Insignia? Is it H. R. Sanders, whose name is printed on the cover of every installment of the wildly successful young adult adventure series? Or is it Daniel Roche, the enigmatic world traveler who disappears for months at a time? When Daniel’s great-niece, Helene, moves to Paris to study archeology, she does not expect to be searching for answers to these questions. As rumors circulate, however, that the twenty-fourth volume of The Black Insignia series will be the last, Helene and her friend Guillaume, a devoted fan of her great-uncle’s books, set out to discover more about the man whose life eludes her. In so doing, she uncovers an explosive secret dating back to the darkest days of the Occupation.

In recounting the moment when one history began and another ended, The Travels of Daniel Ascher explores the true nature of fiction: is it a refuge, a lie, or a stand-in for mourning?

Deborah Levy-Bertherat lives in Paris, where she teaches comparative literature at the Ecole Normale Superieure. She has translated Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time and Gogol’s Petersburg Tales into French. The Travels of Daniel Ascher is her first novel.

Adriana Hunter studied French and Drama at the University of London. She has translated more than fifty books including Electrico W by Herve Le Tellier (winner of the French-American Foundation’s 2013 Translation Prize in Fiction). She won the 2011 Scott Moncrieff Prize and has been short-listed twice for the Florence Gould Foundation Translation Prize. She lives in Norfolk, England.