One of the great mavericks of French literature, Georges Bernanos combined raw realism with a spiritual focus of visionary intensity. Mouchette stands with his celebrated Diary of a Country Priest as the perfection of his singular art.
“Nothing but a little savage” is how the village school-teacher describes fourteen-year-old Mouchette, and that view is echoed by every right-thinking local citizen. Mouchette herself doesn’t bother to contradict it; ragged, foulmouthed, dirt-poor, a born liar and loser, she knows herself to be, in the words of the story, “alone, completely alone, against everyone.” Hers is a tale of “tragic solitude” in which despair and salvation appear to be inextricably intertwined.
Bernanos uncompromising genius was a powerful inspiration to Flannery O’Connor, and Mouchette was the source of a celebrated movie by Robert Bresson.
- ISBN10 1590171519
- ISBN13 9781590171516
- Publish Date 21 November 2005
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Publisher The New York Review of Books, Inc
- Imprint NYRB Classics
- Edition Main
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 156
- Language English
- URL https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9781590171516