Books

Here are some books, fiction and non-fiction, I have come across, (mostly) read, and wanted to post on this site:
Le Grand débordement by Elodie Fradet, Annick Lacout, Pascal de Rauglaudre (2014, Editions rue de l’Echiquier, in French) – shows how we can reuse the things we discard, using examples of innovations in France and elsewhere.
Junkyard Planet by Adam Minter (2013, Bloomsbury Press, in English) – when you drop your Coke can in the recycling bin, where does it go? Probably halfway around the world, to people that clean up what you don’t want and turn it into something you can’t wait to buy. Adam Minter—journalist and son of an American junkyard owner—travels into a vast, often hidden, multibillion-dollar industry that’s transforming our economy and environment.
LitterHow other people’s rubbish shapes our life by Theodore Dalrymple (2011, Gibson Square Books, UK) – a short, heartfelt polemic about modern Britain and how it doesn’t deal with its rubbish. What does it mean when a country tips its rubbish anywhere it likes?  

Rubbish by Richard Girling (2005, Eden Project Books, UK), the story of rubbish from the Greeks to today and how we deal with our waste.                                                         – Le Roi de l’Ordure by Raymond Jean (1990, Actes Sud, in French, fiction), a tale of the trials and tribulations of a landfill baron in a fictitious Latin American country, showing how luxury, poverty and power co-exist.

Love and Garbage by Ivan Klima (1986, in Czech, English translation in 1990), tells the story of a dissident writer, condemned to be a street sweeper by day in pre-Velvet Revolution Prague, torn between the love for his mistress and his wife. See also the interview in French (1992, English subtitles) about the book, which has some autobiographical elements.

Endgame by Samuel Beckett (1957, first written in French, then translated by the author), a play considered to be in the vein of the Theatre of the Absurd, first shown in London in French. It evokes the meaningless and grotesque aspects of existence using characters such as Nell and Nagg, the parents of the main ‘anti-hero’ Hamm, who are legless and inhabit dustbins…