– 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…