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The Magnificent Meaulnes (Le Grand Meaulnes)
The Magnificent Meaulnes (Le Grand Meaulnes)
Aug 7, 2025 6:14 AM

Author:Henri Alain-Fournier,Valerie Lester

The Magnificent Meaulnes (Le Grand Meaulnes)

When Augustin Meaulnes arrives in François' home, he changes everything. Life in the little town where they both go to school suddenly becomes far more adventurous and exciting. On one of his escapades, Meaulnes gets lost in the countryside finds himself at an extraordinary party where he meets the girl of his dreams. From this point on he is haunted by her memory and devotes his life, with François' willing help, to finding her again.

Reviews

It has captured the hearts, and fantasies, of generations of adolescents and lingered on their bookshelves, and in their souls, well into middle age...a tale of enchantment. It is, above all, a fairy tale, one imbued with the beauties of the French countryside, an eerie, charged nostalgia and all the yearnings of the budding Bohemian soul

—— Independent

A bewitching tale of adolescence, love, adventure and the mysterious spaces in between

—— Sunday Times

One of the most romantic, elegiac novels of adolescence ever written...resounds with not only the unfulfilled promise of the writer and his fictional alter ego but also that of a generation

—— Sunday Telegraph

It is an extraordinary book, part fairytale or romance, part realistic study of French provincial life, sometimes grim, in the last years of the 19th century; and some of its fascination comes from this curiously hybrid quality. It is both naive and knowing. It has the dewy freshness of a first novel, but it is also admirably constructed

—— Spectator

Intense, perfectly capturing that interval between childhood and the adult world

—— Rosie Thomas

A little masterpiece...irresistible

—— Sunday Express

After 150 years still have the power to fascinate readers

—— Contemporary Review

Beautifully written and this re-designed cover is stunning

—— Devon Life

I'm a huge fan. Wodehouse writes proper jokes.

—— Jennifer Saunders

To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language.

—— Ben Schott

One jaw-droppingly powerful, courageous and original fiction debut...As a 10th work of fiction this would be impressive; as a debut, it is remarkable

—— Sunday Telegraph

Hands down the best fictional debut we have read this year

—— Dazed & Confused

For the imagery alone and for the sentences, the book would be a treasure, but the story it tells - the story of the suicide of the author's father - has an immediacy and sharpness made all the more special by the tone of distance in the narrative and the beauty of the writing

—— Colm Toibin, Observer books of the year

David Vann's Legend of a Suicide is brave, fantastically well written, and completely defies categorisation

—— Julie Myerson, Daily Telegraph books of the year

From the shores of Vann's Alaska one can see the Russia of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons ... 'A father, after all,' Vann writes, 'is a lot for a thing to be.' A son is also a lot for a thing to be; so is an artist. With Legend of a Suicide David Vann proves himself a fine example of both

—— New York Times

...a gripping fantasy thriller that will please all the older Harry Potter fans out there

—— Yours Magazine

Jonathan Littell veers between brilliance and bathos...

—— Sally Cousins , The Telegraph

Grotesque, dismaying, chilling in its focus on the fine detail of barbarism, this epic of evil is also addictively readable

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent on Sunday

Compelling... utterly engaging... for anyone whose interest in his subjects is great to enough to bear their unflinching portrayal The Kindly Ones is an essential novel

—— Chris Power , The Times

It's an amazing picture of evil, wonderfully written (and very well translated from the original French by Charlotte Mandell), and left me feeling as though I had supped with the damned

—— Jane Knight , The Times
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