A “gabion” is a type of cabin, common in the coastal swamps of Normandy, used by bird hunters; here it is the name of an asteroid-hunting starship, normally anchored to Earth, now drifting in space. On board we follow Anton, an alien who gathers scattered photocopies and tries to escape militiamen on their way to the core of the spacecraft…

An experimental novel that combines sci-fi with a reflection on language, politics, and sex, Le Gabion is Théo Robine-Langlois’ second book. The languages spoken by the different characters – be they wild children, feminist groups, cruel lords, or zombies – contaminate the book, that reads as a collage of poems, adventures, text messages, glitches, electoral slogans, and lyrics. In Le Gabion one may hide in a paragraph, read in between the lines of the user’s manual of a photocopy machine, or follow poets’ battles. Throughout the narrative communities and characters are defined by the way they handle language, metabolizing the words of thinkers, activists, and poets, and inventing alternative models of society along the way.