Sylvie Germain: Jours de colère (Days of Anger)

The latest addition to my website is Sylvie Germain‘s Jours de colère (Days of Anger). This book, a reissue by publishers Dedalus, is a classic modern French novel, mixing Gothic and Greek tragedy in a remote wooded area of France. Ambroise Maupertuis witnesses an altercation between Vincent Corvol and his wife Catherine and blackmails him into handing over his forests and his daughter Claude to marry Maupertuis’ son Ephraim. Ephraim prefers the gargantuan Fat-Ginnie and is disowned and disinherited by his father when he marries her and they produce nine sons, all born on 15 August. Maupertuis makes Marceau, his second son, marry Claude and they have a daughter Camille, the spitting image of her grandmother Catherine. However, when Camille finally grows up and meets the nine brothers, things go drastically wrong. This is a superb poetic novel which deservedly has a great reputation in France.

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