Le Coeur est un chasseur solitaire [The Heart is a Lonely Hunter]

Paris, Stock, coll. “Le Cabinet cosmopolite”, (May 30) 1947.
1 vol. (130 x 195 mm) of 352 p. and [1] f. Paperback.

First edition of the French translation, by M.-M. Fayet. Preface by Denis de Rougemont.
One of the first 100 non-commercial copies on “vélin suédois” paper.
Presentation copy, inscribed: “To Francis Ambrière, from Carson McCullers”.

We apologize for the imperfect translation generated by Deepl for the purposes of the show.

The year’s literary revelation, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was published in the United States in 1940. A stunning novel about adolescence, it is set in 1930s America, in the depths of a stifling small town in the Faulknerian South where John Singer, a mysterious deaf-mute who, despite his infirmity, serves as a confidant to a young girl lost in overly chimerical dreams. A largely autobiographical work haunted by the expectation of a departure or an encounter that might break the stifling monotony of the days, to which she would give an echo five years later with Frankie Addams (The Member of the Wedding). Then came her encounter with Tennessee Williams, then with the man who was to become (twice) her husband and with whom she traveled in Europe, at the time when her book was published in France. The couple settled permanently in 1952, in the Oise, in Bachivillers, in a presbytery located about fifty kilometers from the hamlet of Bonvillers where, almost at the same time, a certain Francis Ambrière had moved in: the dedication in the volume is probably a trace of this neighborhood, unless it is strictly from the first trip in 1947.

At that time, Francis Ambrière had received the Prix Goncourt for his book “Grandes vacances” a few months earlier, officially rewarding the year 1940, as the prize had been “suspended” that year. The story stands out against Pierre Guillain de Bénouville’s Le Sacrifice du matin and David Rousset’s L’Univers concentrationnaire, two other books from a thematic shortlist that is an exception in the Goncourt awards, intended that year to honor the combatants of the Second World War.