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by Georges Simenon (Author), Siân Reynolds (Translator)
A shattering study of restlessness and midlife crisis on the ocean, from an icon of bleak fiction.
François Mahé took his family on vacation to Porquerolles, a sun-drenched Côte d'Azur island, only because a friend suggested it. His everyday life as a small-town doctor was sedate and predictable, but contented--until he experienced the strange, hostile energy of Porquerolles, with its intense heat and deafening thrum of cicadas. Now François is consumed with a terrible restlessness, a mutinous longing that settles on an impoverished young girl. He doesn't love her, he tells himself, or even desire her. Yet for what she represents--danger, newness, a renunciation of passivity--he may just set a match to everything. A pitiless meditation on the irreconcilable lures of belonging and freedom, The Mahé Circle is Georges Simenon at the height of his disturbing powers.
Author Biography
Georges Simenon (1903-1989) was born in Liège, Belgium. An intrepid traveler with a profound interest in people, Simenon strove on and off the page to understand--and not to judge--the human condition in all its shades. His books include the Inspector Maigret series and a richly varied body of wider work united by its evocative power, its economy of means, and its penetrating psychological insight. He is among the most widely read writers in the global canon.
Siân Reynolds was born in Cardiff, and taught at both the University of Sussex and the University of Edinburgh before serving as chair of French at the University of Stirling from 1990 to 2004. She has translated numerous books from the French, both fiction and nonfiction, including works by the crime writer Fred Vargas.
