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The Ogre

by Michel Tournier, Barbara Bray (Translator)

4.16 of 5 stars 4.16 · rating details · 515 ratings · 32 reviews

An international bestseller and winner of the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary award, The Ogre is a masterful tale of innocence, perversion, and obsession. It follows the passage of strange, gentle Abel Tiffauges from submissive schoolboy to "ogre" of the Nazi school at the castle of Kaltenborn, taking us deeper into the dark heart of fascism than any nove...more

Paperback, 373 pages

Published March 18th 1997 by The Johns Hopkins University Press (first published 1970)

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3rd out of 50 books — 8 voters

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Apr 20, 2011 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

At a high point in a pivotal relationship formed during his refectory days in an alien French boy's school, Abel Tiffauges is told the gruesome apocryphal story of the Baron des Adrets' newfound awareness of cadent euphoria by the obese enigma Nestor. The crescendo is reached when the latter murmurs in coda that "There's probably nothing more moving in a man's life than the accidental discovery of his own perversion." Just how much truth this observation bore is revealed to Abel many years later...more At a high point in a pivotal relationship formed during his refectory days in an alien French boy's school, Abel Tiffauges is told the gruesome apocryphal story of the Baron des Adrets' newfound awareness of cadent euphoria by the obese enigma Nestor. The crescendo is reached when the latter murmurs in coda that "There's probably nothing more moving in a man's life than the accidental discovery of his own perversion." Just how much truth this observation bore is revealed to Abel many years later, when he has mutated from a bunched-up, undersized boy into a hulking giant of a man: bearing a wounded child in his massive arms, he is lapped by beatific paroxysms of phoric joy, much akin to that experienced by a pair of historic personages: St. Christopher when he similarly performed as steed for a riverine Christ, and Alfonso d'Albuquerque, a conquistador in peril of death at the hands of the boundless sea, who perched a lad atop his shoulders in the desperate hope that the youth's innocence would serve to cleanse him of sin and turn the eye of God toward him in a favorable light. Would that there were enough innocence to mount and shrive the twentieth-century, an epoch when perversion, obsession, and desire freed themselves from all restraints and ran amok amid a continent watered with blood.

The Ogre is a beautifully strange novel, alternately narrated by and about the remarkable Abel Tiffauges—a Frenchman so unlike his countrymen, a gentle giant who firmly believes himself an eternal and potent natural force, primordial in origin, descended across the mists of time from the original Abel, the nomad brother of the sedentary Cain who—in a pattern to be repeated ad nauseam throughout history's pages—was murdered by his sibling for his hateful and peregrine individuality. Tiffauges interacts with the material world only in a routine and perfunctory manner, quietly going about his solitary business while experiencing a rich and eccentric inner life, in which systems and symbols, portents and preordained fates illuminate every event in their explicatory light. Even as the apocalypse of the Second World War thunders down upon Europe and Tiffauges is swept from a Parisian suburban garage to Teutonic castles amidst the marshy forests and plains of East Prussia, he is central to this avenging maelstrom, a locus for the melancholy loam of Prussian nature, yet completely apart from it—a separate entity to the daily suffering and slaughter that plays out around him. Finding in the war the means to pursue his child-focussed obsessions, Abel calmly sets about a phoric existence, luxuriating in its anarchic bliss until the diabolical inversion that always threatens the innocent poisons the roots of all his fantasies.

Michel Tournier has penned a marvel here, a haunting, quirky story that lingers in the mind like a disturbing dream. The fascinating symbolism and ego-mythology of Abel's unique and contentedly lonely mind, after having spread to saturate every event and path of the story, are swiftly drawn back in a taut synthesis for the perfectly realized final pages. The dialectic between innocence as a guileless love of being, of man, of life, and its malignant inversion purity, a satanic hatred of all that innocence cherishes, holds place of primacy, along with those of freshness versus corruption, chaste desire against lust, and the boundaries of amorality. Abel imagines himself an innocent—but why then his need to be anointed by that of a child? Abel's immense capacity for sacrifice and compassion exist right alongside his utter indifference to the suffering of the majority of humanity who don't conform to his ideals; the children he so gently carries have been cruelly ripped from the arms of their parents, and a mother's tears move him no more than the death throes of the Third Reich. Unrealized guilt yet contains the potentiality for redemption that is immanent in culpability. Not until the horrific joke played out by the malignant streams of fate is revealed to him, in all the fullness of its macabre glory, does Abel finally understand the price of phoria and truly behold the Erl-King's sovereignty, the inescapable fate in store for the Ogre, whether in the pellucid realm of fairy-tale or the grim theatre of reality.(less)

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Mar 15, 2010 Tyler rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: People Who Collect Things

Recommended to Tyler by: Literary Award

At the end of this story one mystery lingers: Did something magical happen? “If you answer yes,” the book seems to say, “humans are inescapably haunted. If you answer no, people may be safe, but the cost will come elsewhere.” Either way I now see clearly why Prussia suddenly vanished.

What instigates the mystery is the protagonist. Abel Tiffauge is a fairly normal French guy despite thinking of himself as an “ogre” with his over-muscled shoulders. But what’s normal is relative. Who among us hasn’...more At the end of this story one mystery lingers: Did something magical happen? “If you answer yes,” the book seems to say, “humans are inescapably haunted. If you answer no, people may be safe, but the cost will come elsewhere.” Either way I now see clearly why Prussia suddenly vanished.

What instigates the mystery is the protagonist. Abel Tiffauge is a fairly normal French guy despite thinking of himself as an “ogre” with his over-muscled shoulders. But what’s normal is relative. Who among us hasn’t experienced this: You’re listening to someone you’ve known just a little while. Every sentence he utters makes perfect sense, but you gradually realize that the more he talks, the crazier he sounds. Some strange force subverts the logic of his discourse, and you end up staring, not hearing. Tiffauge has that effect

Our ogre’s conversational detours, however, dazzle rather than annoy. At times he gets caught up in his private notion of the phoric, referring to things that carry. Cars fascinate him because they carry people – anthropophoria. And people carry objects and other people, in their arms and on their shoulders. Ancient spirits might carry things, too, if they existed. Or as another example, purity in Tiffauge’s mind becomes opposed to innocence. Then come his ideas about symbols. What moral status do they possess? Are they able to act own their own? Exceptional meanings, for this man, affect the ordinary incidents of life.

The story and its musings take Tiffauge from the Paris garage he owns to German Prussia during World War II. Once there “the violent bear it away,” as Flannery O’Connor, quoting the Bible, once expressed it. Tiffauge’s changed environment eerily resembles The Erl-King, a mythic 19th century poem by Prussia’s own Goethe. Tiffauge’s passions soon become entwined with Prussia’s destiny. As the war reaches its climax and the Russian Army pours over Germany’s borders, we learn who Tiffauge takes himself to be and what he intends.

This novel ranks high for its originality and style. Because the particulars of the story also appeal to my own tastes, I give The Ogre the highest rating. Indeed, this book won France’s top literary award in 1970 – that’s one of the reasons I ordered it. Barbara Bray has done a fine translation which reads smoothly in English. This provocative tale never actually insists anything mystical took place within its ken. Yet on the whole a phoric spirit enfolds the plot. (less)

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Jul 12, 2007 Jim Coughenour rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: bleakfiction

The "ogre" of the title is Abel Tiffauges, a French mechanic who first appears a kind of autistic naif, strange rather than frightening in his obsessions (or perversions). It begins in France, 1938, in the years before Hitler's invasion — then as the war progresses, the setting moves eastward, into a winter-world of horror, and ultimately, transcendence — which I admit doesn't tell you much. It's an unusual, demanding novel; to my mind, a work of genius, unlike anything I've ever read, including...more

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Nov 03, 2012 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 2 of 5 stars

This earned a star from me for the research and inventive musings the author had obviously done to do pedantic exhibitions about:

1. monsters;

2. the Aristotelian concept of "potency" (which he managed to tie up with the sexual act);

3. the two types of women, the "woman-trinket" (one who can be manipulated by men) and the "woman-landscape" ( one whom a man can only visit);

4. benign inversion (evil becoming good, sort of) and the malign inversion (the reverse);

5. euphoria, phoria ("to carry"), phor...more

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May 09, 2009 Josh rated it 4 of 5 stars

Since The Ogre is a book obsessed with taxonomy, heraldry, classification of all kinds, I'll start by saying that the author MIchel Tournier most reminds me of is Thomas Mann. Mann's playful, ironic fictions seem to have fallen out of use these days (I for one can't get over Guy Davenport's comparison of him to James Joyce: "Mann imposes meaning; Joyce finds it; Mann looks for weakness in strength; Joyce, for strength in weakness. Mann's novels illustrate ideas; Joyce's return ideas to their ori...more Since The Ogre is a book obsessed with taxonomy, heraldry, classification of all kinds, I'll start by saying that the author MIchel Tournier most reminds me of is Thomas Mann. Mann's playful, ironic fictions seem to have fallen out of use these days (I for one can't get over Guy Davenport's comparison of him to James Joyce: "Mann imposes meaning; Joyce finds it; Mann looks for weakness in strength; Joyce, for strength in weakness. Mann's novels illustrate ideas; Joyce's return ideas to their origins."); but reading The Ogre, I was reminded again of how incredibly fun it is to move around in a novel whose reserves are charged, rather than sapped, by a sense of ideal forms. At times, for all its storytelling and scene-setting and narrative capability, this book seems to be more of an ecology than even the most experimental nouveaux romans. Indeed, by the end of it, I got the sense that Tournier is not just system-obsessed, but system-haunted, and that the pages upon pages detailing the main character's private universe were put there as a way to make us see how a modern-day Crusoe (that is, a person who feels completely cut off from human connection) might go about surviving. Loneliness. This book is very lonely. It is also, I think, a testament and warning to anyone who ever spent a year and a half trying to learn Elvish (followed by Dark Elvish, Klingon, and - probably because it was the most strange and "made up sounding" of the languages that my high school offered - Russian). What happens when the world you make in your head takes over? Or, to put it more even handedly (I hope), How do we light the mental/emotional candelabra inside us without eclipsing the very real and consequential world outside us? How do we keep from destroying/being destroyed? In places, Tournier's book may be in a little too much of a hurry the answer these questions, to follow the arrow of its logic. I wanted more of the tide pools. But the last fifty pages or so are legitimately visionary and horrible, an inverted King Matt the First, and worth the momentum. (less)

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Mar 11, 2013 Jim rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, france, 20th-century-lit

If you wish to be an ogre, then it is very important that you not only be bullied mercilessly, but that you react by choosing someone completely unsuitable as a role model. This is what happens to Abel Tiffauges, the son of an auto mechanic, who despite his height is treated like dirt at a Catholic school and ends by inheriting his father's garage.

Along the way, he develops some strange ideas regarding children. While he is not a pederast and never even attempts to initiate any overt molestation...more If you wish to be an ogre, then it is very important that you not only be bullied mercilessly, but that you react by choosing someone completely unsuitable as a role model. This is what happens to Abel Tiffauges, the son of an auto mechanic, who despite his height is treated like dirt at a Catholic school and ends by inheriting his father's garage.

Along the way, he develops some strange ideas regarding children. While he is not a pederast and never even attempts to initiate any overt molestation. Yet he is falsely accused by a little girl to whom he has given rides in his car of rape. Just when he is about to be adjudged as guilty of crime, a sympathetic judge frees him providing he joins the army. It is only days before the German invasion of France, and the Phony War is about to turn into a real shooting war.

Before long, Abel is captured by the Germans and sent to a prison camp in East Prussia, where he develops a reputation as a trusted, hard-working prisoner. Because of his ability with motor vehicles, he is transferred to Goering's giant hunting lodge at Rominten, and from there to the napola of Kaltenborn, where he becomes an assistant to a racial theorist named Otto Blaettchen.

These napolas are short for National Political Academies, where German youth are trained to become SS officers. As always, Tiffauges enters into the spirit of the institution and even takes over Blaettchen's position when the latter is transferred to the Eastern Front. In the end, Tiffauges is so successful in finding prototypically Aryan-looking recruits that he develops a fearsome reputation in the Prussian hinterland:

This warning is addressed to all mothers in the areas of Gehlenburg, Sensburg, Loetzen and Lyck!

BEWARE OF THE OGRE OF KALTENBORN!

He is after your children. He roves through our country stealing children. If you have any, never forget the Ogre—he never forgets them! Don't let them go out alone. Teach them to run away and hide if they see a giant on a blue horse with a pack of black hounds. If he comes to see you, don't yield to his threats, don't be taken in by his promises. All mothers should be guided by one certainty: If the Ogre takes your child, you will NEVER see him again!

At the napola, the boys (and girls) are raised in a military discipline heavily laden with the ersatz symbolism of a quasi-fictitious Teutonic past.

What eventually happens, of course, is that the Russians invade on their way to take Berlin. The ending of Michel Tournier's The Ogre is exceedingly strange, and not altogether successful.

The book does, however, show how one on the borders of evil can still be strangely innocent, while contributing to the overall evils of National Socialism.

The Ogre is probably one of the best French novels of the second half of the Twentieth Century. Tournier succeeds in keeping the reader enthralled from the first page to the last.
(less)

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Jan 12, 2013 Marc L rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: french-literature, world-war-2

Alleszins een bijzonder boek, maar ik weet er niet zo goed raad mee. Het eerste derde is een mengeling van dagboekfragmenten, herinneringen en mijmeringen, vooral gevuld met een terugblik op de collegejaren van Abel Tiffauges, een gehandicapte garagist uit Parijs. De lectuur van dit deel verloopt bijzonder moeizaam, maar het wordt wel duidelijk dat Tiffauges op een heel vreemde manier naar de werkelijkheid kijkt, met een bijzondere voorliefde voor jonge kinderen, jawel. Hij ziet zichzelf als 'Po...more Alleszins een bijzonder boek, maar ik weet er niet zo goed raad mee. Het eerste derde is een mengeling van dagboekfragmenten, herinneringen en mijmeringen, vooral gevuld met een terugblik op de collegejaren van Abel Tiffauges, een gehandicapte garagist uit Parijs. De lectuur van dit deel verloopt bijzonder moeizaam, maar het wordt wel duidelijk dat Tiffauges op een heel vreemde manier naar de werkelijkheid kijkt, met een bijzondere voorliefde voor jonge kinderen, jawel. Hij ziet zichzelf als 'Portenfant' (kinderdrager) naar analogie met de patroonheilige van zijn school Sint-Christoffel; maar een vriendin wijst hem ook op de 'oger'-mythe, het mensachtig monster uit de sprookjes dat op kinderen jaagt.
Dan verschuift het perspectief: de Tweede Wereldoorlog breekt uit en Tiffauges wordt als krijgsgevangene naar een kamp in Oost-Pruisen gevoerd. Hij krijgt er wonderwel heel veel vrijheid, wordt onder andere hulpje van Göring en uiteindelijk zelfs factotum in een school voor de Hitlerjugend. Hier kan hij zijn bijzondere "aanleg" nog verdiepen in het spoor van de wrede en systematische nazi-aanpak. Uiteraard wordt hier ook de link gelegd met het bekende gedicht van Goethe, de Elzenkoning. De afloop verklap ik hier niet, maar temidden de apocalyptische taferelen van het instortende Derde Rijk, komt Tiffauges wel tot inkeer.
Dit hele deel in Oost-Pruisen leest een heel stuk vlotter, en er zit zelfs een pervers effect in, dat je "smaak" doet krijgen in de wrede jacht op edelherten, het maniakale ontleden en in kaart brengen van raciale en fysieke kenmerken van jongeren, de gruwelijk harde opleiding van de Hitlerjugend, enzovoort. Bovendien werken ook de prachtige beschrijvingen van het Oost-Pruisische landschap (donkere bossen, liefelijke meren en grote kastelen van de Teutoonse Orde), en de wagneriaanse sfeer erg aanstekelijk. Tournier heeft daar veel kritiek voor gekregen, als zou hij het nazisme te sympathiek hebben voorgesteld. Ik deel die opinie alleszins niet, integendeel; Tournier is er in geslaagd het perverse in elke menselijke ziel bloot te leggen, en hij toont pertinent tot welke ontsporing dit kan leiden.
Kortom, er steekt behoorlijk wat in dit boek om er een prachtig, zij het schokkend, werk van te maken, maar uiteindelijk hou ik het bij slechts drie sterren want ik kan niet zeggen dat ik veel genoegen heb beleefd aan de lectuur van dit boek, het was bijwijlen ploeteren en ploegen. (less)

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Sep 01, 2012 Jacob Wren added it · review of another edition

Michel Tournier writes

There’s probably nothing more moving in a man’s life than the accidental discovery of his own perversion.

and:

The very perfection of its functioning and the terrible energy that went into it were enough to exclude him forever, but he knew no machinery is safe from a piece of grit, and that fate was on his side.

and:

The moth flies on wings of love toward the electric light bulb. And when he gets there, close to it, as near as he can be to that which attracts him irresistibly,...more

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Oct 17, 2012 *Dragonfly* rated it 4 of 5 stars

Dopada mi se kako su Svetlana i Franja Termacic preveli Turnijeov roman. Posebno je zanimljivo kako su resili nedoumicu oko naziva.

U francuskom originalu, roman je nazvan "Le roi des aulnes", doslovno prevedeno - Kralj jovà.

Posto su Termacici smatrali da takav naziv zvuci prilicno nespretno,
odlucili su se za Kralja Vilovnjaka i tako ucinili jasnom aluziju na Geteovu pesmu koja se pominje u romanu.

Dalje, "Le roi des aulnes" je francuski prevod pomenute Geteove pesme "Der Erlkönig".

Aleksa Santic j...more

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May 08, 2012 Mikael Kuoppala rated it 4 of 5 stars

Disturbing an powerful, the Ogre takes the reader through the scary psychology of totalitarian thinking by exploring the mind of a Nazi scientist during WWII.

When Michel Tournier is mentioned to someone, you often hear comments like: "Isn't that the author who could only write about human sexual perversions?", but if you examine his work more deeply, you'll see that there is a lot more to his writing than that.

"The Ogre" is Tournier’s second novel. It begins by telling us the story of a French m...more Disturbing an powerful, the Ogre takes the reader through the scary psychology of totalitarian thinking by exploring the mind of a Nazi scientist during WWII.

When Michel Tournier is mentioned to someone, you often hear comments like: "Isn't that the author who could only write about human sexual perversions?", but if you examine his work more deeply, you'll see that there is a lot more to his writing than that.

"The Ogre" is Tournier’s second novel. It begins by telling us the story of a French mechanic named Abel Tiffauges, living during the end of 1930's, who one day injures his right hand. This random occurrence sets the character on a disturbing journey the reader gets to witness in horrid fascination.

This intriguing novel is divided into six segments, from which the first (and the longest) is the most fascinating. It deals with this multi-dimensional character's past and present through one year's worth of diary entries- which he starts writing with his left hand after the previously mentioned accident. By the end of the segment this strange character of Abel Tiffauges with his peculiar habits and personality feels extremely real and deep, hence securing the feeling of reality for the whole artistically written book. The segment ends as Tiffauges stops writing after the beginning of the war between France and Germany.

The first segment is followed by three weaker segments which, unlike the first one, are told in a traditional third-person narrating and are filled with surprisingly unlikely coincidences and contrived events as they depict Tiffauges' journey through Nazi-Germany, first as a French soldier, then as a prisoner of war, and finally a ranger.

Then the novel improves again as it gets to its fifth segment, which almost raises to the level of the first one. It shows us an intriguing transformation process as, again by ridiculously unbelievable coincidences, Tiffauges ends up becoming an SS-officer and an instructor in a Hitler-Jugend training facility.

Step by step this at first reluctant character grows more and more fascinated with antisemitism and the complex eugenic assumptions about racial differences. The segment is dark and unsettling, as it describes a transformation in which Tiffauges gets divided psychologically and ultimately can't separate reality from what he's been taught. The reader goes through the same process. Tournier has an uncanny ability to take a reader’s mind and mold momentarily through the viewpoint of what you would assume would be completely unrelatable characters.

In the sixth and final segment the reader gets to witness Tiffauges's journey through chaos as he experiences an enlightenment that leads to his understanding of his own inner evil and eventually carries him into self-destruction. This process is unevenly illuminated and it occurs suddenly, seemingly not leading towards any sorts of conclusions. The ending of the book is blurry, and it leaves the reader frustrated but intrigued with issues unfinished and not dealt with.

In the end "The Ogre" is a book that I recommend to anyone, even though many people will probably not like it as much as I did. And I did. A lot. Despite all my criticism about the structure and pacing.(less)

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Apr 15, 2010 carl theaker rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: history-fiction, ww2

Saw the not well known flic 'The Ogre' with John Malchovich, which is based
on this book, which has inspirations from the Goethe poem 'The Erl-King'.
The book is situated just before and during WWII, both are pretty good.

Author Tournier appears to be a French Gunter Grass. He uses the protagonist,
a simplistic Frenchman Tiffauges, to view the Reich in a sentimental fashion,
allowing him to critique his own country (France) a bit.

Tiffauges, a mechanic in Paris 1938, injures his hand so while taking s...more

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Aug 27, 2010 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, french-lit, prix-goncourt

The Ogre tells the story of a man who recruits children to be Nazis in the belief that he is protecting them. The novel received the Prix Goncourt. Volker Schlöndorff directed a 1996 film, based on the novel, with the title The Ogre.
Michel Tournier’s novel is an unsettling work that relies on a range of narrative strategies to achieve its effects. Notable among these is the alternation between first-and third-person narration. The book opens with the “Sinister Writings” of the protagonist, Abel...more

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Mar 26, 2011 Maja rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: bjuuutiful-fiction

The English translation of the title "Le Roi des Aulnes" is somehow awkward. Nevertheless it is a Michel Tournier's brilliant account on the humanity through the eyes of one of the most curious characters in literature.

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Dec 18, 2012 Jem Wilton rated it 1 of 5 stars

Worst book for a long time..the one revelation - that we all like to look or experience something horrible now and again... well, surprise, surprise...!!! The rest was boring, but stupidly, I read it front to back.

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Jun 15, 2011 katy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm practicing reading French, and may have missed a lot of vocabulary here, but what I got was fascinating and mysterious. The theme of the book is based on a poem by Goethe which I must investigate further. The setting is largely a military school for boys in Hitler's Germany. The protagonist is a French prisoner of war with an affinity for animals and young boys. The author's commentaries on photography, war, symbols, and many other topics are unique. I'll read more of his work.

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Jun 09, 2009 Adrian rated it 5 of 5 stars

Absolutely mesmirizing! As insightful as it is eerie. Couldn't put it down.

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Nov 03, 2012 Claudia Cravens rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book has everything.

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Apr 17, 2009 Jill Sampson rated it 4 of 5 stars

the movie's not bad, either

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Jan 04, 2011 nathan added it

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Jun 14, 2011 Jesse rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, own

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

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Jun 09, 2008 Albert F. Jester rated it 3 of 5 stars

a strange and disturbing novel..framed by the old german myth of the "erl-koenig" [erl king] /and the famous poem of goethe/ and st christopher..a french prisoner recruits young boys for a hitler youth camp and everything in the world a sign.."now I know that any human face, however vile, becomes the face of Christ when it is struck"

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Nov 11, 2012 Sarah Beth rated it 4 of 5 stars

Highly appropriate after just reading Gombrowicz and Sebald. I mean, if I was that kind of person I'd think it was 'meant to be.' Pointing towards some well-ordered sequence of events or something. It's a relief to know, in France at least, they still give awards to books that deserve them.

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Jun 14, 2012 Tom rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, french

Ohlala. Voila un livre qui est difficile à expliquer. Beaucoup d'éléments provocatives, une histoire influencée par la mythologie et la Christianité. Si vous êtes préparés pour un boulversement éthique, lisez 'Le Roi Des Aulnes'!

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Aug 25, 2007 Sadie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm really curious to read the recent translation of this book (this version was published way back in 84). I found the story and character intriguing but the language the translator used put me to sleep sometimes.

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May 08, 2013 Kobe Bryant rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book has a lot of symbolism and the protagonist has weird feelings towards children and animals and the ogres here are metaphorical and not the fantasy creatures

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Apr 01, 2013 Horvallis rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Masterpiece.

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Jan 24, 2008 Ren rated it 5 of 5 stars

I owe this one to Brendan.

Fantastic book that hit me upside the head out of nowhere...

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Sep 01, 2010 Pmartina added it · review of another edition

Totally sucked in. Learnt a lot about wild animal droppings.

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Sep 01, 2010 Matthew Thompson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Where do I start? Not for everyone but I find it mesmerizing.

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Nov 24, 2010 Gergely rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Hátborzongató és fantasztikus könyv, letaglózó írás móddal.

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About Michel Tournier

Michel Tournier is a French writer.

His works are highly considered and have won important awards such as the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française in 1967 for Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique. and the Prix Goncourt for Le Roi des aulnes in 1970. His works dwell on the fantastic, his inspirations including traditional German culture, Catholicism, and the philosophies of Gaston Bachelard. H...more

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