The Son of Man
A Novel
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- Pedido anticipado
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- Lanzamiento previsto: 16 jul 2024
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- USD 12.99
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- Pedido anticipado
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- USD 12.99
Descripción editorial
From the author of the “extraordinary” Animalia (Sunday Times), winner of the Republic of Consciousness Prize and finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and Best Translated Book Award, a blazing new novel exploring nature, family, and violence, set on a hostile and glorious mountainside haunted by transgressions of the past
In the soft morning light, a man, a woman, and a child drive beyond the borders of a sleepy French post-industrial town into the forested mountains beyond. After several years of absence, the man has reappeared in the life of his wife and their young son, intent on being a family again. He takes them to Les Roches, a dilapidated house in the mountains where he grew up with his own ruthless father. There, while the mother watches the passing days with apprehension, the son discovers the bewitching enchantment of nature, from the herds of wild horses who gather under a grove of sycamores to the infinite expanse of a glittering night sky.
Although the family is at last reunited, the father exerts a growing hold over the mother and child, dictating the mysterious laws of their new, isolated existence, supported by the provisions he has stockpiled in a locked lean-to. As the weather turns from wondrous spring into the heat of summer and finally to the hostile chill of autumn, the house falls further into disrepair and a return to the mother and son’s previous life seems more and more impossible.
The winner of the Prix du Roman Fnac in France, and brilliantly translated into English by the award-winning translator Frank Wynne, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s The Son of Man is an exceptional novel of nature and wildness that traces how violence is inherited from one generation to the next, and a blistering examination of how families fold together and break apart under duress.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Del Amo follows up his memorable Animalia with another arresting French rural gothic. The story begins with a prehistoric tableau in which a young boy, under the watchful eyes of his father, participates in his first deer hunt. The episode lends a mythic quality to Del Amo's narrative, which shifts to the present day as a father abruptly reenters the life of his nine-year-old son after an absence of six years. Eventually, he brings the boy and his mother to live in the "hushed, hostile, cold" cabin where he grew up. The surrounding woods are a source of fascination and terror to the boy, as is his father, an enigmatic stranger whose "glowering presence" puts his mother ill at ease. As the novel progresses, a sense of "indefinable menace" builds as the run-down house decays even further, the mother's health deteriorates, and the father's erratic behavior and explosive anger make his plans seem more sinister than they first appeared. Del Amo's signature florid style comes to life in Wynne's consummate translation, and at the heart of the lurid plot is a sensitive depiction of a boy's confusion. Once this gets its hooks in readers, it won't let go.