Gloire à nos illustres pionniers

This is Romain Gary’s only collection of short stories; he adapted the first, “Les oiseaux vont mourir au Pérou,” into a film in 1968. “I found the title of this collection of stories in Les Promenades sentimentales au clair de lune by Sacha Tsipotchkine: ‘Man… one day, he will make himself!’ There was no premeditation on my part: in writing these stories, I believed I was simply indulging in the pleasure of storytelling; my familiar demons once again prevented me from going on vacation.” Do not bother looking for Tsipotchkine’s Les Promenades sentimentales au clair de lune: the writer and his book are entirely the product of Gary’s fertile imagination.

The collection is made up of sixteen stories: “Les oiseaux vont mourir au Pérou,” “Le Luth,” “Un humaniste,” “Décadence,” “Le Faux,” “Les Joies de la nature,” “Noblesse et grandeur,” “Citoyen pigeon,” “Une page d’histoire,” “Le Mur,” “Tout va bien sur le Kilimandjaro,” “Je parle de l’héroïsme,” “Les Habitants de la Terre,” “J’ai soif d’innocence,” “La plus vieille histoire du monde” and “Gloire à nos illustres pionniers.” The first and second-to-last were written during Gary’s stay in Bolivia.