"Gracq's position in modern French literature rests on his remarkable prose. He was one of the great stylists of his century, a writer with a carnal relation to words, capable of extraordinary and hallucinatory evocative power" The Times
ABOUT THE BOOK
Two lovers arrive at a seaside hotel in 1920's Brittany. The other guests soon become obsessed with the man, the equivocal unsettling Allan. One by one they realise who he is - that death has come to spend the summer with them. Amid the ceaseless thunder of the waves, the wild and often surreal Breton landscape, the group that gravitates around Allan - an uncannily contemporary figure - gradually disintegrates. His death seems to symbolize the end of a generation, the approach of war.
That Gracq wrote this oblique, prescient novel in a remote German prisoner of war camp makes its carefree jazz age setting particularly poignant.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julien Gracq taught history and geography in various lycees. Although close to Andre Breton, he never belonged to the Surrealist movement as is sometimes thought. His work, inspired by German Romanticism, combines startling imagery with a rich, precise metre.
Staunchly avoiding the French literary scene - he refused the Prix Goncourt in 1951 - he is one of the few authors to be published in the Pleiade during his lifetime.
He died in 2007 aged 97.
Translated by Christopher Moncrieff
ISBN 9781901285826
ABOUT THE BOOK
Two lovers arrive at a seaside hotel in 1920's Brittany. The other guests soon become obsessed with the man, the equivocal unsettling Allan. One by one they realise who he is - that death has come to spend the summer with them. Amid the ceaseless thunder of the waves, the wild and often surreal Breton landscape, the group that gravitates around Allan - an uncannily contemporary figure - gradually disintegrates. His death seems to symbolize the end of a generation, the approach of war.
That Gracq wrote this oblique, prescient novel in a remote German prisoner of war camp makes its carefree jazz age setting particularly poignant.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julien Gracq taught history and geography in various lycees. Although close to Andre Breton, he never belonged to the Surrealist movement as is sometimes thought. His work, inspired by German Romanticism, combines startling imagery with a rich, precise metre.
Staunchly avoiding the French literary scene - he refused the Prix Goncourt in 1951 - he is one of the few authors to be published in the Pleiade during his lifetime.
He died in 2007 aged 97.
Translated by Christopher Moncrieff
ISBN 9781901285826
