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  • Published: 15 June 2004
  • ISBN: 9781590171516
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 156
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

Mouchette



One of the great mavericks of French literature, Georges Bernanos combined raw realism with a spiritual focus of visionary intensity. Mouchette stands with his celebrated Diary of a Country Priest as the perfection of his singular art.

“Nothing but a little savage” is how the village school-teacher describes fourteen-year-old Mouchette, and that view is echoed by every right-thinking local citizen. Mouchette herself doesn’t bother to contradict it; ragged, foulmouthed, dirt-poor, a born liar and loser, she knows herself to be, in the words of the story, “alone, completely alone, against everyone.” Hers is a tale of “tragic solitude” in which despair and salvation appear to be inextricably intertwined.

Bernanos uncompromising genius was a powerful inspiration to Flannery O’Connor, and Mouchette was the source of a celebrated movie by Robert Bresson.

  • Published: 15 June 2004
  • ISBN: 9781590171516
  • Imprint: NY Review Books
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 156
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

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