A tale of primitive love and vendetta set in the timeless French landscape of river, mountain and forest. Sailor, a woodsman, has twin sons, the elder of whom is dead and the younger, the red-head, has gone missing upcountry where the powerful landowner Maudru holds sway. With his friend Antonio, the riverman, he goes in search of the boy, fearing that he too has been killed. On the way they come upon a lone girl giving birth in the woods at dead of night, and they bring her to a place of safety. Once among Maudru's drovers, who effectively serve him as a private army, they have to watch their step, the more so when they learn that the lost twin is in fact alive but the object of a ruthless manhunt, for he has married Maudru's daughter against her father's wishes, and is blamed, too, for the death of a nephew. With its taut yet elegiac atmosphere The Song of the World is unmistakably the work of a master storyteller.
This may be the most curious and powerful book you have never heard about. Operates at a strange subconscious level in a most primitive way. Deserves to be counted among the great classics of the 20th Century.
pure magic
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 22 years ago
This book, and Giono's Joy of Man's Desiring, are the two of the most beautiful, wise, transformative works of fiction that I know -- even in translation. The translations are excellent, but Giono's writing, and his vision, are among the wisest and most eloquent in any language -- it is these books that gave me the impetus to be a writer. If you care for nature, and the prospect of humankind living in genuine participation and reciprocity with earthly nature, these are your books. An essential tonic for our collective ecological insanity...
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