La Brière

Black Country ( French La Brière ) is a novel by the French writer Alphonse de Châteaubriant. The first edition was published in 1923 and received in the same year the prestigious Grand Prix du Roman of the Académie française. In 1925 he was translated into German by Rudolf Schott countries.

Content

Aoustin, the main character of the novel is, looking for a letter of King Louis XVI. , Written 1784th It was confirmed that the Breton Duke Francis II 1461 fishing and hunting rights were granted. Its aim is thereby to prevent the nationalization of the swamp. The novel contains extensive descriptions of the landscape of La Brière and everyday life of its inhabitants.

Reception

Shortly after its publication, the novel was extremely popular, which can not only translate into German and English, but also in its film adaptation by Léon Poirier read. Like many other novels of Châteaubriant also this is however largely fallen into oblivion and later been hardly been received for its own sake, which is due mainly to the collaboration of the authors with the German occupiers during World War II. The Breton nationalism in which the sympathies Châteaubriants are justified for Nazism among other things, is in the novel already clear to read.

Editions and translations

• Alphonse de Châteaubriant: La Brière. Éditions Grasset, Paris, 1923. Black Country. Übers Rudolf Schott countries. The forge, Berlin 1925 ( series: novels of the twentieth century. ).
• Passion and Peat. Übers Frances Mabel Robinson. Thornton Butterworth, London, 1927.