Claro's 'Chair électrique' explores the electric chair's history and a modern executioner's tale

Claro, renowned as one of France's finest translators of authors like Danielewski, Vollmann, and Pynchon, publishes his eighth book, 'Chair électrique' (Éditions Verticales). The title plays on the French word 'chair' (flesh) and the English 'chair'. The novel traces the documented history of the electric chair, beginning with a drunken docker's fatal coupling with an electric generator in Buffalo on August 7, 1881. This incident inspired a machine for killing stray animals and later, humans condemned to death, under the philanthropic aim of finding 'the most humane and efficient method'. The narrative also follows executioner Howard Hordinary, unemployed since Pennsylvania adopted lethal injection, who experiments with virtual and carnal sex. The book features inventive, percussive writing and intelligent narrativity.