num_pages: 180
description: Raymond Queneau occupies a unique position in modern literature, a writer who brings an extraordinary imagination to every book, whose skill with words and rich, often ribald sense of humour links him to Joyce, an innovator who delights in everyday speech with its argot, rhythms and obscenities and the ways in which words can be manipulated to make puns, create associations and add to the gaiety of living. Like Nabokov and Anthony Burgess he has, while much admired by intellectuals, been able to achieve an astonishing popularity with many of his books, and the reader always feels that unlike many of his contemporaries he writes principally to give pleasure. The title of this novel, first published in France in 1952, is taken from a saying of Hegel, that the Sunday of Life is where good nature reigns and men reject evil. The soldier Brû is such a man and it is with him, his wife, marriage, neighbours and experiences that the book deals. Brû can only return bad with good and his positive personality makes this heart-warming novel a welcome oasis of intelligent optimism in an age where literature usually tends to reflect the dangers and miseries of modern society with its grim predicaments.
language: English
title: The Sunday of Life
titlecomplete: The Sunday of Life
genres: Fiction, France, French Literature, Classics, Novels, 20th Century
ratings_count: 294
publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc