A King Alone
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
An existential detective story by one of France's most popular modern writers, set in a mid-nineteenth century mountain village, available in English for the first time
A King Alone is set in a remote Alpine village that is cut off from the world by rugged mountains and by long months when the ground is covered with snow and the heavens with cloud. One such winter, villagers begin mysteriously to disappear. Soon the village is paralyzed by terror, which gives way to relief and eager anticipation when the outsider Langlois arrives to investigate. What he discovers, however, will leave no one reassured, and his reappearance in the village a few years later, now assigned the task of guarding it from wolves, awakens those troubling memories. A man of few words, a regal manner, and military efficiency, Langlois baffles and fascinates the villagers, whose different responses to him shape Jean Giono’s increasingly charged narrative. This novel about a tiny community at the dangerous edge of things and a man of law who is a man alone could be described as a metaphysical Western. It unfolds with the uncanny inevitability and disturbing intensity of a dream.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This strange and disquieting novel from Giono (Melville) is set in an unnamed Alpine village and begins in 1843, when its residents begin disappearing. First, a young woman disappears, then a pig is slashed, then a hunter disappears. Captain Langlois is called in to investigate, and the killer is found. The serpentine novel then jumps years forward with Langlois now in charge of protecting the village from wolves, and then leaps forward again to relate Langlois's ill-fated search for a wife to marry, leading to a startling finale. Rather than episodic, the twisting narrative reads like a game of telephone passed through generations, with Langlois at the center as a sort of legendary totem to the villagers. Intriguingly, his inner thoughts are never revealed, and the villagers can only guess at what he is thinking. Highlights include stellar landscape descriptions ("All around us the larks were making noise like knives squeaking in green apples") and some spectacular scenes, including a wolf hunt and a chilling sequence that begins with a grisly discovery in a beech tree. Giono's novel is a startling and exhilaratingly enigmatic experience.
