Occupation Journal
by Jean Giono
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Pub Date Mar 20 2020 | Archive Date Feb 02 2020
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Description
Written during the years of France's occupation by the Nazis, Jean Giono's Occupation Journal reveals the inner workings of one of France's great literary minds during one of the country's darkest hours. A renowned writer and committed pacifist throughout the 1930s--a conviction that resulted in his imprisonment before and after the Occupation--Giono spent the war in the village of Contadour in Provence, where he wrote, corresponded with other writers, and cared for his consumptive daughter. This journal records his musings on art and literature, his observations of life, his interactions with the machinery of the collaborationist Vichy regime, as well as his forceful political convictions. Giono recounts the details of his life with fierce independence of thought and novelistic attention to character and dialogue. Occupation Journal is a fascinating historical document as well as a unique window into one of French literature's most voracious and critical minds.
Advance Praise
• "For Giono, literature and reality overlap the way that waves sweep over the shore, one ceaselessly refreshing the other and, in certain wondrous moments, giving it a glassy clearness."--Ryu Spaeth, The New Republic • "Giono's voice is the voice of the realist; his accents are the accents of simplicity, power and a passionate feeling for a land and a people that he must love as well as understand."--The New York Times
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781939810564 |
| PRICE | $18.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 200 |
Featured Reviews
Mandy J, Reviewer
Jean Giono (1895-1970) is one of France’s most acclaimed writers and this diary, which he kept during the Nazi occupation, offers a vivid picture of his life in a small French village. It only covers a short period, from September 1943 to September 1944, when he was arrested for “collaboration” but is nevertheless a fascinating document. The diary hasn’t been edited or annotated which means it has an immediacy that makes it particularly interesting, although sometimes I found Giono’s musings about his work and his creative process a little tedious. As a literary and historical record of this turbulent period in France’s history, and in Giono’s life, it is indeed a valuable document, and although some advance knowledge of Giono’s life and work is advantageous, it can be read as a stand-alone account of life in France at that time.
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