{"product_id":"the-flanders-road-paperback","title":"The Flanders Road - Paperback","description":"\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eClaude Simon\u003c\/b\u003e (Author), \u003cb\u003eRichard Howard\u003c\/b\u003e (Translator), \u003cb\u003eJerry W. Carlson\u003c\/b\u003e (Introduction by)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eBy the winner of the 1985 Nobel Prize in Literature, a riveting, stylistically audacious modernist epic about the French cavalry's bloody face-off against German Panzer tanks during WWII.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eOn a sunny day in May 1940, the French army sent out the cavalry against the invading German army's panzer tanks. Unsurprisingly, the French were routed. Twenty-six-year-old Claude Simon was among the French forces. As they retreated, he saw his captain shot off his horse by a German sniper. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis is the primal scene to which Simon returns repeatedly in his fiction and nowhere so powerfully as in his most famous novel \u003ci\u003eThe Flanders Road\u003c\/i\u003e. Here Simon's own memories overlap with those of his central character, Georges, whose captain, a distant relative, dies a similar death. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eGeorges reviews the circumstances and sense--or senselessness--of that death, first in the company of a fellow prisoner in a POW camp and then some years later in the course of an ever more erotically charged visit to the captain's widow, Corinne. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAs he does, other stories emerge: Corinne's prewar affair with the jockey Iglésia, who would become the captain's orderly; the possible suicide of an eighteenth-century ancestor, whose grim portrait loomed large in Georges's childhood home; Georges's learned father, whose books are no help against barbarism. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe great question throughout, the question that must be urgently asked even as it remains unanswerable, is whether fiction can confront and respond to the trauma of history.\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eClaude Simon\u003c\/b\u003e (1913-2005) was born in Madagascar and, after his father was killed in the First World War, raised by his mother in southwestern France. He briefly attended Oxford and Cambridge, studied painting under André Lhote in Paris, and traveled to Barcelona during the Spanish Revolution of 1936. When the Second World War broke out, he fought in the French cavalry, was taken prisoner by the Germans shortly after the Battle of Sedan, and later, back in France, joined the Resistance. These wartime experiences informed many of his novels, including \u003ci\u003eThe Acacia\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Georgics\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Flanders Road\u003c\/i\u003e. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1985. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eRichard Howard\u003c\/b\u003e (1929-2022) was the author of numerous volumes of poetry and the translator of more than one hundred fifty titles from the French, including, for New York Review Books, Marc Fumaroli's \u003ci\u003eWhen the World Spoke French\u003c\/i\u003e, Honoré de Balzac's \u003ci\u003eUnknown Masterpiece\u003c\/i\u003e, and Guy de Maupassant's \u003ci\u003eAlien Hearts\u003c\/i\u003e. He received a National Book Award for his translation of \u003ci\u003eLes Fleurs du mal\u003c\/i\u003e and a Pulitzer Prize for \u003ci\u003eUntitled Subjects\u003c\/i\u003e, a collection of poetry. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003eJerry W. Carlson\u003c\/b\u003e is a professor of literature and film at The City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center. As an independent producer, he worked with Claude Simon on a proposed film version of \u003ci\u003eThe Flanders Road\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 208\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.7 x 7.7 x 5.1 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e July 12, 2022\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Books by splitShops","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51767696589088,"sku":"9781681375953","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0974\/9764\/5344\/files\/91973683cd400244028e98a1f435cb36.webp?v=1780315588","url":"https:\/\/ebocreations.com\/products\/the-flanders-road-paperback","provider":"The E-Book Oasis LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}