The Horseman On The Roof

Jean Giono author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Vintage Publishing

Published:1st Dec '09

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Horseman On The Roof cover

In the white heat the sky is opaque, the air leaden and the light intense. A single cavalryman wonders at the oppressive atmosphere of the unfamiliar countryside he is entering. Exile from his Italian homeland as well as an innate, stubborn pride compel him onward, into the heart of Provence and into the acute cholera epidemic which ravaged the country in the 1830s.

Giono here directs a hallucinatory, lyrical narrative in which the mortal odours, the violent contractions of those who meet with the disease and the fear of a people confronted with insuperable natural forces are palpable. Death pervades the novel, but Angelo does not cease journeying, dodging blockades and quarantine imposed by troops - even seeking temporary refuge on the roofs of one town - determined to find his childhood friend, Giuseppe. Others join him on the road, and leave him. Only the young woman, Pauline de Théus, who calmly receives the intruder who one night descends from the roofs, proves a worthy travelling companion.

Dazzling! From the first to the last frame, Jean-Paul Rappeneau sweeps across the screen with this huge epic. A work of art. * Le Figaro *

With The Horseman, Giono reveals himself as one of the most important novelists in Europe today.

* Times Literary Supplement *

ISBN: 9781846553639

Dimensions: 198mm x 126mm x 22mm

Weight: 261g

384 pages