Le Calvaire

by Octave Mirbeau, Christine Donougher (Translator)

Overview

Le Calvaire is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, which recounts the tortured and traumatic coming of age of the narrator Jean Mintie. It paints a nightmarish picture of late nineteenth century French society: from the stultifying boredom of bourgeois provincialism, to the horrors of the Franco-Prussian war, the grotesque avarice of shameless women and the moral bankruptcy of their compliant victims. Mintie's progress through life is a descent into Hell, a plumbing of the lower depths, the martyrdom of a godless man in a godless age.
The publication of Le Calvaire in 1886 marked a brilliant beginning for the Angry Young Man of the Age, who went on to flay the Establishment in Torture Garden and The Diary of a Chambermaid.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780946626991
Publisher:	Dedalus, Limited
Publication date:	01/01/1997
Series:	Decadence Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	223
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917) was a French journalist, art critic, travel writer, pamphleteer, novelist, and playwright, who achieved celebrity in Europe and great success among the public, while still appealing to the literary and artistic avant-garde. His work has been translated into thirty languages

Christine Donougher was born in England in 1954. She read English at Cambridge University and after a career in publishing is now a freelance translator of French and Italian. Her translation of The Book of Nights won the 1992 Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize. Her translations from French for Dedalus are seven novels by Sylvie Germain: The Book of Nights, Night of Amber, Days of Anger, The Book of Tobias, Invitation to a Journey, The Song of False Lovers and Magnus, Enigma by Rezvani, The Experience of the Night by Marcel Bealu, Le Calvaire by Octave Mirbeau, Tales from the Saragossa Manuscript by Jan Potocki, The Land of Darkness by Daniel Arsand and Paris Noir by Jacques Yonnet. Her translations from Italian for Dedalus are Senso (and other stories) by Camillo Boito, Sparrow (and other stories) by Giovanni Verga and Cleopatra Goes To Prison by Claudia Durastanti.

Her translations from Italian The Price of Dreams by Margherita Giacobino and Venice Noir by Isabella Panfido will be published by Dedalus in 2020.