HORSEMAN ON THE ROOF: 0001 (Horseman on the Roof Ppr) - Softcover

Giono, Jean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 086547060X ISBN 13: 9780865470606

Publisher: Hill and Wang, 1986

Synopsis

Perhaps no other of his novels better reveals Giono's perfect balance between lyricism and narrative, description and characterization, the epic and the particular, than The Horseman on the Roof. This novel, which Giono began writing in 1934 and which was published in 1951, expanded and solidified his reputation as one of Europe's most important writers.

This is a novel of adventure, a roman courtois, that tells the story of Angelo, a nobleman who has been forced to leave Italy because of a duel, and is returning to his homeland by way of Provence. But that region is in the grip of a cholera epidemic, travelers are being imprisoned behind barricades, and exposure to the disease is almost certain.

Angelo's escapades, adventures, and heroic self-sacrifice in this hot, hallucinatory landscape, among corpses, criminals and rioting townspeople, share this epic tale.

About this title

Review:

"One of the greatest writers of our generations." --Andre Malraux

"In Giono's work what every sensitive, full-blooded individual ought to be able to recognize at one is "the song of the world." --Henry Miller

"Jean Giono is one of the giants of modern French letters. He is the poet of the French countryside and of the French peasant, of man and nature, and the relation of man to nature. His books stand apart; there is nothing else in all French literature quite like them." --The Living Age

"Giono has stridden forward with a giant's step. He reveals himself as one of the most important novelists in Europe today." --The Times Literary Supplement

From the Back Cover:

"Dazzling! From the first of the last frame, Jean-Paul Rappeneau sweeps across the screen with this huge epic. A work of art" Le Figaro

In the white heat the sky is opaque, the air leaden and the light intense. A single cavalryman wonders at the oppressive atmosphere of the unfamiliar countryside he is entering. Exile from his Italian homeland as well as an innate, stubborn pride compel him onward, into the heart of Provence and into the acute cholera epidemic which ravages the country in the 1830s.

Giono here directs a hallucinatory, lyrical narrative in which the mortal odours, the violent contractions of those who meet with the disease and the fear of a people confronted with insuperable natural forces are palpable. Death pervades the novel, but Angelo does not cease journeying, dodging blockades and quarantine imposed by troops - even seeking temporary refuge on the roofs of own town - determined to find his childhood friend, Giuseppe. Others join him on the road, and leave him. Only the young woman, Pauline de Theus, who calmly receives the intruder who one night descends from the roofs, proves a worthy travelling companion.

"With The Horseman, Giono reveals himself as one of the most important novelist in Europe today" Times Literary Supplement

About this edition

• Publisher: Hill and Wang
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 086547060X
• ISBN 13: 9780865470606
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 436