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French
NYRB Classics
31 January 2005
The Child is a story about growing up that is comparable in humor and humanity to

Great Expectations, even as its unflinching exposure of violence and hypocrisy foreshadows

the nightmare realsim of Louis-Ferdinand Celine. Jules Vall s, an anarchist and a

bohemian, dedicated his book ""to all those who were bored stiff at school or reduced

to tears at home, who in childhood were bullied by their teachers or thrashed by

their parents,"" and it tells the (autobiographical) tale of a young boy constantly

scapegoated and abused, emotionally and physically, by his peasant mother and schoolteacher

father, whose greatest concern is to improve their social status. But the young hero

learns to stand up to his parents, even to love them, in time, and for all the intense

pain the book registers it is anything but dreary. To the contrary, Vall s's book

is one of the funniest in French literature, a triumph of insubordinate comedy over

the forces of order and the self-appointed defenders of decency.
By:  
Introduction by:  
Translated by:  
Imprint:   NYRB Classics
Country of Publication:   United States
Edition:   Main
Dimensions:   Height: 203mm,  Width: 20mm,  Spine: 129mm
Weight:   380g
ISBN:   9781590171172
ISBN 10:   1590171179
Pages:   376
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Bohemian journalist and anarchist pamphleteer Jules Vall s (1832-1885) wrote a trilogy of autobiographical novels, of which this is the first. Douglas Parm e has translated works by Flaubert, Zola, and Baudelaire. He lives in Australia.

Reviews for The Child

[Valles] is a more reliable witness of his society, or at least certain sectors of it, than many more renowned but less involved writers of his age. -- Walter D. Redfern, Times Literary Supplement Essentially autobiographical, Valles's 19th-century novel charts the author's experience of growing up in an emotionally distant family obsessed with social status. -- The Guardian The author of The Child is one of the masters of French prose. There's no denying that. But his work shouldn't be considered an exercise in virtuosity. It has an exact and terrible significance. His work stands as an act of liberation. Valles is the man who liberates us from the family, who liberates us from our father and our mother, who says to us: 'judge them and, if there is cause to, condemn them'. -- Maurice Barres A true book, a book composed of the most exact, the most poignant human documents. It's been ten years since a work has moved me to such a degree. -- Emile Zola


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