num_pages: 223
description: Le Calvaire is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, which recounts the tortured and traumatic coming of age of the narrator Jean Mintie.It paints a nightmarish picture of late nineteenth century French from the stultifying boredom of bourgeois provincialism, to the horrors of the Franco-Prussian war, the grotesque avarice of shameless women and the moral bankruptcy of their compliant victims. Mintie's progress through life is a descent into Hell, a plumbing of the lower depths, the martyrdom of a godless man in a godless age.The publication of Le Calvaire in 1886 marked a brilliant beginning for the Angry Young Man of the Age, who went on to flay the Establishment in Torture Garden and The Diary of a Chambermaid.
language: French
title: Le Calvaire
titlecomplete: Le Calvaire
genres: Fiction, 19th Century, French Literature, France, Literature
ratings_count: 79
publisher: Hippocrene Books