Le Fils

Simenon’s novelistic output — excluding the “Maigret” series — totals 258 titles: 117 novels, 130 short stories and 10 story collections. The Presses de la Cité period alone comprises 91 titles (again excluding “Maigret”), of which 60 novels belong to the so-called “destiny” cycle.

The manuscript of Le Fils — preserved in the Fonds Simenon at the University of Liège — was completed at Golden Gate, his property in Cannes, on 28 December 1956. Among the working papers kept with the manuscript is a list of other titles considered: Le squelette Lefrançois, La troisième chance, Le Poids des autres and Le Fardeau des autres.

The book appeared in June 1957, in Presses de la Cité boards with a color-illustrated dust jacket by Jean Jacquelin. This marked an important turning point in the design of Simenon’s books, with an enlarged format and the abandonment of soft wrappers in favor of publisher’s boards under an illustrated dust jacket, for which one of the great names of commercial graphic illustration, Jean Jacquelin, was commissioned.

The first edition was numbered and printed on superior paper, but only about thirty titles were issued in this form: starting with Le Passage de la ligne (fourth quarter 1958), the numbered deluxe printing would instead be issued in sheets in a double box.

Le Fils is a deeply moving novel by Simenon: shortly after his father’s death, Alain Lefrançois decides to tell his own story in a letter to his son, Jean-Paul, just as the boy is about to become a man — a letter that culminates in the revelation of a heavy secret.