Search

The Berynxes are a middle-class family with a world of problems: Charlam, the grandfather, wants to take control after the death of his son, while Edith, the aunt, harbours passion for her nephew Georges. But that is merely the surface. Beneath the veneer of their lives lies all manner of complexities and unresolved issues."

Sylvie Germain was born in Chateauroux in Central France in 1954. She read philosophy at the Sorbonne, being awarded a doctorate. From 1987 until the summer of 1993 she taught philosophy at the French School in Prague. She now lives in Pau in the Pyrenees. Sylvie Germain is the author of nine works of fiction, eight of which have been published by Dedalus, a study of the painter Vermeer and a religious mediation. Her work has been translated into seventeen languages and has received worldwide acclaim. Sylvie Germain's first novel The Book of Nights was published to France to great acclaim in 1985. It has won five literary prizes as well as the TLS Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize in England. The novel's story is continued in Night of Amber in 1987. Her third novel Days of Anger won the Prix Femina in 1989. It was followed by The Medusa Child in 1991 and The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague in 1992, the beginning of her Prague trilogy, continued with Infinite Possibilities in 1993 and then Invitation to a Journey. The Book of Tobias saw a return to rural France and la France profonde. Ludvik is a man who has touched bottom. Eleven years ago he left his country appalled by the

A student participating in the May 1968 riots in Paris is involved in the ritualistic murder of a boy. Volume two of the Peniel family saga by the author of Book of Nights.

The patriarch of the Peniel family, with his own daughter, fathers a son, Victor-Flandrin, who goes on to sire fifteen children of his own. "Their stories, in turn, are driven by eccentricity and surges of inexplicable events, but no amount of magic or love can keep the Peniels safe from the murderous engines of the world wars."--Booklist review.

a haunting classic Madeleine Kingsley in She Magazine An intricate, finely crafted and polished tale, The Weeping Woman on the Streets of Prague brings magic-realism to the dimly lit streets of Prague. Through the squares and alleys a woman walks, the embodiment of human pity, sorrow, death. Everyone she passes is touched by her, and Germain skilfully creates an intense mood and feel in her attempt to produce a spiritual map of Prague. The Observer

Deep in the forests of Moran, far from civilization, live families of woodcutters and shepherds. A remote and beautiful world, it is a place where madness still reigns, murder occurs, and bloody punishments are delivered. What has happened to the body of the sensual and beautiful Catherine Corvol, wife of a rich landowner, killed not out of hatred but an excess of love? Around this central enigma, Germain has created a gothic enchantment, a dazzling rural fantasy rich in angels, obsession, and revenge where the reader is carried forward as much by the lyricism and strangeness of the language as by the macabre and fantastic turns of the plot.

A novel, translated by Liz Nash. Lucie Daubigne is an adventurous eight-year old whose idyllic childhood ends when, given a new room of her own, she is visited by an ogre. It is their secret, and if she tells anyone she will be sorry; so Lucie becomes the ogre's third victim, and is abused each night by her stepbrother Ferdinand. She becomes strange, drawing into herself, waiting in dread for the nightly visit.

Dans les forêts du Morvan, loin du monde, vivent bûcherons, flotteurs de bois, bouviers, des hommes que les forêts ont faits à leur image, à leur puissance, à leur solitude, à leur dureté. Même l'amour, en eux, prend des accents de colère - c'est ainsi par excès d'amour que Corvol, le riche propriétaire, a égorgé sa belle et sensuelle épouse, Catherine, au bord de l'eau - et la folie rôde : douce, chez Edmée Verselay qui vit dans l'adoration de la Vierge Marie ; ou sous l'espèce d'une faim insatiable, chez Reinette-la-Grasse ; ou d'une extrême violence, chez Ambroise Mauperthuis qui se prend de passion pour Catherine, qu'il n'a vue que morte, et qui s'empare de son corps, puis des biens de Corvol, enfin des enfants de Corvol. Il finira par perdre sa petite-fille Camille, le seul être qu'il ait jamais aimé, par excès d'amour, encore.