Au bout du rouleau

The son of a peasant farmer, Marcel Viau has vainly tried to become someone else, concealing his humble origins. Arrested by the police in a village in his native region, he is caught up by a past marked by theft. This long wandering of a man who never accepted his family background moved Gide, who wrote as a reader: “An extraordinary concern for others. There is the narrative and there is its surroundings. The individual remains immersed in life (…) Someone fundamentally mediocre, who feels out of place everywhere; driven by himself toward murder or suicide.”

The novel was written between 27 May and 5 June 1946 at the Glengary House villa in Saint Andrews (New Mexico), where Simenon made only a brief stay, just long enough to write this text and Le Clan des Ostendais.