Le Crime des justes

André Chamson’s third novel, following Roux le bandit (1925) and Les Hommes de la route (1927), Le Crime des justes belongs to what the author himself would later call a Suite cévenole, reissued under that title in 1992 with a preface by his daughter, Frédérique Hébrard. These three foundational novels draw on real events transmitted through oral tradition, transfigured by the young writer’s sober, taut and deeply moral style.

Here, in a remote Protestant hamlet in the Cévennes around 1900, a young deaf-mute woman becomes pregnant by her brother. To avoid scandal, her grandfather Arnal — known as the Conseiller, a figure of the just and respected patriarch — decides to kill the child. He alone takes responsibility for the crime, denounces himself and submits to the justice of the State. The justice of the valley against the justice of the Republic: a dramatic tension as violent as it is silent, in which the mountain keeps its secrets as jealously as its laws.

A fine copy.