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Authors: Katherine Pancol
The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles
A PENGUIN BOOK
The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles
Katherine Pancol is one of France’s best known contemporary authors.
The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles
was a huge success in France, where it won the Prix de Maison de la Presse for best novel of the year. To date, it has sold some 2.4 million copies in thirty languages. Katherine was born in Morocco, grew up in France, taught school in Switzerland, and worked as a journalist at
Paris-Match.
She lived in New York City from 1980 to 1990 and has published two sequels to
The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles: La Valse lente des tortues
(2008) and
Les Écureuils de Central Park sont tristes le lundi
(2010).
The
Yellow Eyes
of Crocodiles
KATHERINE PANCOL
Translated by
WILLIAM RODARMOR
and
HELEN DICKINSON
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in Penguin Books 2013
A Pamela Dorman / Penguin Book
Copyright © 2006 by Editions Albin Michel - Paris
Translation copyright © 2013 by William Rodarmor and Helen Dickinson
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Originally published in France by Editions Albin Michel - Paris in 2006
as
Les yeux jaunes des crocodiles
This edition is an abridgement of the original French-language work.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Pancol, Katherine, 1949–
[Yeux Jaunes des Crocodiles. English]
The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles / Katherine Pancol;
translated by William Rodarmor and Helen Dickinson.
pages cm
ISBN: 978-1-101-61387-0
1. French fiction—21st century—Translations into English.
I. Rodarmor, William, translator. II. Dickinson, Helen, 1967– translator. III. Title.
PQ2676.A4684Y4813 2013
843’.914—dc23 2013028077
Designed by Elke Sigal
Map Illustration by Virginia Norey
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
To Charlotte,
To Clément,
My loves . . .
Acknowledgments
I
am thrilled that
The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles
, which has been such an unexpected best seller in France and elsewhere, is finally available in English. The book has been translated into twenty-nine other languages, and American readers will now have a chance to sink their teeth in it.
Many wonderful people have helped bring this project to fruition. I particularly want to thank Solène Chabanais, foreign rights director at Albin Michel in Paris, and publisher Pamela Dorman and her associates Kiki Koroshetz and Julie Miesionczek at Penguin Books in New York. Thanks also to Patricia Connelly, who worked tirelessly to generate interest in an American translation of
Crocodiles.
She was the first good fairy to wave her magic wand over the book in the United States.
Finally, a special thank-you goes to translator William Rodarmor, who has been bravely wrestling
Crocodiles
for more than a year. William did more than translate the book. He immersed
himself in the French text, characters, and plot, and then recreated them in English. This is the work of a true writer, for which I am enormously grateful.
As always, heartfelt thanks go to my friends and family for their support. To my long-suffering children Charlotte and Clement, I really do love you more than crocodiles.
—Katherine Pancol
Paris, 2013
PART I
J
oséphine gasped and dropped the vegetable peeler. The blade had slipped on the potato and cut a long gash into her wrist. There was blood everywhere. She looked at her blue veins, the red streak, the white sink, the yellow plastic colander where the peeled white potatoes lay glistening. Leaning against the sink, she began to cry.