Novel
Raboliot
Not translated into English
Maurice Genevoix · 1925
Synopsis
Pierre Fouques, known as Raboliot, a woodcutter in the Sologne, has a passion for poaching and laughs at the rules as he does at those who enforce them. Caught and sentenced, he refuses to serve his sentence, despite his wife's pleas, and flees into the woods, which he knows better than anyone. The gendarme Bourrel is determined to recapture him, and the nocturnal hunt gradually turns into hatred between the two men.
Context
The book appeared with Grasset in 1925 and received the Prix Goncourt the same year. The setting of the story is the country around Lamotte-Beuvron and Brinon-sur-Sauldre, and the hero's nickname there designates the wild rabbit. The novel shows the relations between landowners and the poor in the years immediately following the war of 1914. It has been adapted for the screen, then for television.
Who it is for
A slow novel, in which nature takes up as much space as the men; the Sologne dialect is constant but transparent.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's best book, the novel was reissued in 2020 with a new preface by a grandson of the writer.
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