num_pages: 208
description: As the First World War rages on, the daily life of a small town near the front is hardly disturbed by the report of artillery fire and the parade of wounded in its streets. But within the space of a year, this illusion of ordinary days is shattered by the deaths of three innocents—a charming schoolmistress from “the north,” who captured every male heart only to take her own life without apparent reason; an angelic eight-year-old girl, who is strangled, her body abandoned by the canal; and the cherished wife of the local policeman, who dies in labor while her husband is hunting the little girl’s murderer.Twenty years on, the policeman still struggles to make sense of these mysteries that both torment and sustain him. In the pages of his notebooks he continually—desperately, obsessively—summons up the past and its ghosts. But excavating the town’s secret history will bring neither peace to him nor justice to the wicked. And as his solitary detective work continues on these long-closed cases, we come to see that his efforts can lead only to an unimaginable widening of the tragedy.In the policeman’s simple, plangent voice--full of unflinching scrutiny and the compassion of weary experience--Philippe Claudel gives us a tale of galvanizing suspense and an indelible meditation on morality.
language: English
title: By a Slow River
titlecomplete: By a Slow River
genres: France, Roman, Historical, Mystery, War, Historical Fiction, Literature, French Literature, Fiction, Crime
ratings_count: 4795
places: France
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Martin Beck Award, awardedAt: 1041408000000
name: Prix Renaudot, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Independent Foreign Fiction Prize
category: Longlist, awardedAt: 1072944000000
name: Grand Prix des lectrices de Elle
category: roman, awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Premi Llibreter de narrativa, awardedAt: 1262332800000
name: Metų verstinė knyga
publisher: Knopf