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  • Published: 15 January 2010
  • ISBN: 9781846553639
  • Imprint: Harvill Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $30.00

The Horseman On The Roof



In the white heat the sky is opaque, the air leaden and the light intense. A single cavalryman wonders at the oppressive atmosphere of the unfamiliar countryside he is entering. Exile from his Italian homeland as well as an innate, stubborn pride compel him onward, into the heart of Provence and into the acute cholera epidemic which ravaged the country in the 1830s.

Giono here directs a hallucinatory, lyrical narrative in which the mortal odours, the violent contractions of those who meet with the disease and the fear of a people confronted with insuperable natural forces are palpable. Death pervades the novel, but Angelo does not cease journeying, dodging blockades and quarantine imposed by troops - even seeking temporary refuge on the roofs of one town - determined to find his childhood friend, Giuseppe. Others join him on the road, and leave him. Only the young woman, Pauline de Théus, who calmly receives the intruder who one night descends from the roofs, proves a worthy travelling companion.

  • Published: 15 January 2010
  • ISBN: 9781846553639
  • Imprint: Harvill Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 384
  • RRP: $30.00

About the author

Jean Giono

Jean Giono was born in 1895 in Manosque, Provence, and lived there most of his life. He supported his family working as a bank clerk for eighteen years before his first two novels were published, thanks to the generosity of André Gide, to critical acclaim. He went on to write thirty novels, including The Horseman on the Roof, and numerous essays and stories. In 1953, the year in which he wrote The Man who Planted Trees, he was awarded the Prix Monégasque for his collective work. Jean Giono died in October 1970.

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Praise for The Horseman On The Roof

With The Horseman, Giono reveals himself as one of the most important novelists in Europe today.

Times Literary Supplement

Dazzling! From the first to the last frame, Jean-Paul Rappeneau sweeps across the screen with this huge epic. A work of art.

Le Figaro