Noé

In Noé, the second of the Chroniques romanesques, Giono does what he had never before dared to do: he places himself at the center of the narrative. Not as confession, but as a novel of creation. His house, his olive trees, his friends, his books — all enter the ark. Alongside Le Roi sans divertissement, which he had just completed, and Le Hussard, which he was only beginning, he brings in other voices, other presences: the writers he loved, the texts that nourished him, and the hidden music of his library.

It is a world-novel, or rather an open workshop: Giono shapes his sentences here as he prunes his trees, showing us his tools, his gestures, and his silences too. Noé is the novelist’s refuge, his ship, his launching space. As he himself put it: “the writer is the hero.”

A fine copy.