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Poil de Carotte - SAVE 50%!

Poil de Carotte - SAVE 50%!

by Jules Renard
Translated from the French by Ralph Manheim
Illustrated by Félix Vallotton

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Product Details

Godine

Softcover
ISBN: 978-1-56792-523-4
Pages: 200
Size: 5.5" x 8.5"
Published: February 2015
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"A novel as cold and brilliant as ice." - Gilbert Sorrentino

Neglected by his parents, bullied by his peers, left to wander the streets and woods by himself (that is, when he isn't locked in his room or the cellar for punishment), the little redheaded boy known as "Poil de Carotte" ["Carrot Top"] manages to survive the worst that rural France has to offer. His triumph is one of imagination, cunning, and sheer persistence. An inspiration to writers as diverse as Barthelme, Beckett, and Sartre, Jules Renard's timeless novel-in-stories is at once the lyrical account of a hard-knock provincial childhood and a frighteningly acute psychological study of how cruelty can affect a young mind-a book that is by turns chilling, humorous, and quietly beautiful.

"Renard is at the origin of contemporary literature." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"[Poil de Carotte's] continuing power comes from its rejection of fiction's sentimental myths about childhood: Renard wrote elsewhere that a child is a 'small, necessary animal, less human than a cat.'" - Julian Barnes
"A small masterpiece." - Gore Vidal
"[Renard] is a necessary, irreplaceable nourishment . . . [His] prose is faultless, perfectly embodying Baudelaire's ideal of la litterature severe et soignee. I have never found a sentence of his which I could budge. Every word, every rhythm is absolutely, joyously right." - The New York Times
Jules Renard
Jules Renard was born in Châlons-du-Maine, France in 1864, and was a poet, novelist, playwright, a member of the Académie Goncourt, and the mayor of the town of Chitry. His most famous works include Nature Stories, L'Écornifleur, and his posthumously published Journal. Poil de Carotte has been adapted numerous times for the screen. Renard died in 1910.

Ralph Manheim
Ralph Manheim was one of the 20th century's greatest literary translators from French and German. His work includes translations of Brecht, Céline, Günter Grass, Peter Handke, Heidegger, Hesse, among many others. Manheim was the recipient of numerous honors, including the National Book Award and a MacArthur Fellowship.

Félix Vallotton
Felix Vallotton was one of the most prominent figures in the development of the modern woodcut. His signature style, which evokes post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and ukiyo-e, takes advantage of the high-contrast possibilities of the woodcut, rather than attempting to imitate painting with hatching and gradation as did earlier woodcut artists. Vallotton's starkly reductive black-and-white compositions led to the revitalization of the true woodcut as an artistic medium.