The Beast, and Other Tales

“D’Arbaud’s La Bèstio dóu Vacarés is a tragic parable particularly well suited to this moment, when humans believe they dominate nature. Working from both the Provençal original and d’Arbaud’s own French translation, Zonana has captured in this collection the earthy, muscular flavor of an ancient language from a unique place and culture. This novella and the stories that accompany it hauntingly portray the erosion of a proud traditional way of life by the inevitable incursion of modernity.” —Michele Levy, author of Anna’s Dance: A Balkan Odyssey

“D’Arbaud’s forgotten masterpiece, rendered here in Zonana’s vibrant, pulsing prose, opens our eyes to a region of France, the Camargue, and its astonishing natural beauty: landscape, animalscape, and humanscape. Whether bulls or cows, horses or their riders, drought or flood, or the bizarre, fragile half-human creature of the title story, ‘The Beast,’ d'Arbaud’s love for and knowledge of the Camargue come through in Zonana’s translation, which demonstrates her own love for and knowledge of the region and its languages.” —Alyson Waters, translator of Jean Giono’s A King Alone 

“Joyce Zonana has succeeded in channeling the earthiness, the nobility, and the ‘otherness’ of d’Arbaud’s impassioned paean to the Camargue and its denizens—human, natural, and divine. Like the knife wound that Jaume the bull-herder scores on his own arm, to confirm the reality of his dream-like encounter with the Beast, this pulsing narrative keeps drawing us ‘from heaven to Earth, from Earth to heaven.’” —Paul Eprile, translator of Jean Giono’s Melville: A Novel 

“A long overdue translation of Jóusè d’Arbaud’s neglected Provençal masterpiece. Zonana’s well-researched and creatively faithful translation captures the voice and retains the spirit and poetry of this mysterious and captivating work.” —Sandra Beckett, author of Crossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives

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