A young man inherits a house on an island in the middle of the raging waters of a mighty river from a mysterious great-uncle. But to satisfy the conditions of the will, the man must remain on the island for three months, with no other human company save his great-uncle Malicroix’s taciturn servant. And then there will be a further obligation to fulfil…

The book is set in the Camargue in southern France in the early 19th century and was written in the 1940s by French novelist Henri Bosco. Despite Bosco being a major figure in mid-century French literature, the book remained unpublished in English until this year, when my guest Joyce Zonana’s translation appeared in the New York Review of Books Classics series.

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