LA VESTALE DU CALIX (VESTAL OF THE CHALICE)

  Anna, a conscientious but emotional vestal, has been condemned to death for breaking a sacred vase - the celebrated Esclarmonde chalice. Unbeknownst to Anna her mad scientist master makes her spirit leave her body. The experiment is a success and she arises unharmed into another era, where he loses track of her.

In the year 4666, Anna, having become a "retro costumier" at Thomasine Couture, lives with Ankh Delafontaine, a beautiful blonde medievalist, and goes horse riding at Etampes. Sheer happiness.  She is just managing to convince herself that she hasn't passed on to a life after death, when everything gets complicated again.

Anna and Ankh are arrested for not having been present at a Trimslop match, then a horsewoman is murdered. The inquiry decides that the dead woman must be Anna.

Then onto the scene comes Holinshed, a very chic horse that works freelance for humans across the epochs of time...

This book is for all those who love Paris, the end of the world, horses, camping, Simone de Beauvoir... and perhaps football just a little less.

La Vestale du calix is a combination of SF and fantasy in one novel. It recounts the voyage through time and space of two women and a very smart horse. The novel is a light-hearted reflexion on the notion of "lost civilisation" and of the way we project our own religious fantasies on to the dust of centuries and the crumbling ruins of the past. Fuelled by a hatred of football, radical feminism and animal studies, the novel plays on the incongruous encounter of civilisations and on the derisory nature of the notion of scientific progress. Humour and scholarship give depth to this narrative both in its fantastical situations and in the hearty vitality of the writing style!