The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Jean Giono: Le Moulin de Pologne (The Malediction). This is not the joyous Giono novel of his early years but, as the English title tells us, a novel about a curse. The Coste family lived in the Moulin de Pologne (Poland Mill), an estate rather than … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Le Hussard sur le toit (US/UK: The Horseman on the Roof; UK: The Hussar on the Roof). This novel is set in the 1830s during a major cholera pandemic. Angelo Pardi is an Italian revolutionary, fleeing Italy after killing a baron in a duel. He arrives … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Un roi sans divertissement [A King Without Distraction]. The title comes from a quote by Pascal and is the last sentence of the book. This was Giono’s first book published after World War II, when he had been imprisoned for both pacifism (at the beginning) and … Read more
Every year at around this time, publishers in France and francophone Belgium issue a large of numbers of books in all genres, including those originally written in French and those translated from other languages into French. The reasons for this are twofold: firstly, to get them into place and into the shops for the Christmas … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Que ma joie demeure (Joy of Man’s Desiring). This is an unusual book for Giono, as it flirts with fantasy. It is set, as usual, in a farming community in an unnamed region of central France. The region has been affected by a general malaise, making … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Julien Gracq‘s Un balcon en forêt (A Balcony in the Forest). This novel was based on Gracq’s own experiences in World War II and tells of Grange, a young lieutenant, put in charge of a bunker by the River Meuse, near the Belgian border, to stop advancing German … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Le Chant du monde (The Song of the World). This is another superb novel from Giono, something of a Western but with a very French flavour. Sailor, a man of the forest, calls on his friend, Antonio, a man of the river, to help him find … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Julien Gracq‘s Le Rivage des Syrtes (The Opposing Shore). This is is considered Gracq’s best novel, though clearly is related to Dino Buzzati‘s Il deserto dei Tartari (The Tartar Steppe). Like the Buzzati, our hero goes to the remote outpost of a fading empire, which borders a mysterious … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Pierre Senges‘ Fragments de Lichtenberg (Fragments of Lichtenberg) . This is another glorious post-modern romp, this time taking as it starting point the relatively unknown German scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Lichtenberg left behind a collection of what he called Sudelbücher in German, which translates as, approximately, scrap books … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Pierre Senges‘ La réfutation majeure (The Major Refutation). This is a brilliant pastiche, allegedly the French version of a sixteenth century work by the very real Franciscan monk Antonio de Guevara. No manuscript of this work has been found and, even if it did exist, it is not … Read more