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  • Published: 31 May 2007
  • ISBN: 9780141441894
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $22.99

The Lost Estate (Le Grand Meaulnes)




First new English translation since 1959 by acclaimed translator Robin Buss

When Meaulnes first arrives at the local school in Sologne, everyone is captivated by his good looks, daring and charisma. But when Meaulnes disappears for several days, and returns with tales of a strange party at a mysterious house and a beautiful girl hidden within it, he has been changed forever. In his restless search for his Lost Estate and the happiness he found there, Meaulnes, observed by his loyal friend Francois, may risk losing everything he ever had. Poised between youthful admiration and adult resignation, Alain-Fournier's compelling narrator carries the reader through this evocative and unbearably poignant portrayal of desperate friendship and vanished adolescence.

  • Published: 31 May 2007
  • ISBN: 9780141441894
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 256
  • RRP: $22.99

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the author

Henri Alain-Fournier

Date: 2013-08-06
Alain-Fournier was born Henri Alban Fournier, the son of two school teachers, on 3 October 1886 in La Chapelle d'Anguillonin France. He studied at a boarding school in Paris, at the naval college in Brest, and also at the lycée Lakanalin Sceaux, where he met his lifelong friend, the critic Jacque Rivière. In 1905 Fournier had a chance meeting with Yvonne de Quiévrecourt and fell instantly in love. This meeting was the inspiration for Le Grand Meaulnes, though the novel was not finished until Fournier had completed his military service in 1913. While working as a columnist and private tutor, Fournier was called up to fight in the First World War. He was killed in action at Vaux-lès-Palameix in 1914, though his body was not formally identified until 1991. Le Grand Meaulnes is his only finished novel.

Valerie Lester is the author of Phiz, The Man Who Drew Dickens (2004) and Fasten Your Seat Belts!History and Heroism in the Pan Am Cabin (1996).She has published essays and poems in various venues including The Atlantic Monthly, Airways Magazine, and The New Dictionary of National Biography.She first tried translating Le Grand Meaulnes as a teenager at school in Switzerland, and finished the job half a century later.

Henri Alain-Fournier was born in La Chapelle d'Angillon in 1886. His first novel Le Grand Meaulnes was published in 1912. He was killed in action on the Lesuse in 1914. His second novel, Les Miracles appeared posthumously in 1924.

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