The Flanders Road

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G. Braziller, 1961 - Fiction - 320 pages
During the German advance through Belgium into France in 1940, Captain de Reixach is shot dead by a sniper. Three witnesses, involved with him during his lifetime in different capacities - a distant relative, an orderly and a jockey who had an affair with his wife - remember him and help the reader piece together the realities behind the man and his death. A groundbreaking work, for which Claude Simon devised a prose technique mimicking the mind's fluid thought processes, The Flanders Road is not only a masterpiece of stylistic innovation, but also a haunting portrayal - based on a real-life incident - of the chaos and savagery of war.

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About the author (1961)

Claude Simon was born on October 10, 1913 in Tananarive, Madagascar. He was educated at the Collège Stanislas in Paris, Oxford University, Cambridge University, and the André Lhote Academy. He traveled extensively through Spain, Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy and Greece until he joined the French Army during World War II, where he was captured by the Germans but soon escaped to join the Resistance. After the war ended, he wrote several books including The Cheat, The Wind, and The Flanders Road. He received several awards including the prize of l'Express in 1961, the Médicis prize in 1967, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1985. He died in Paris France in July 6, 2005.

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