A Dark Stranger
"Gracq's position in modern French literature rests on his remarkable prose. He was one of the great stylists of his century, a write with a carnal relation to words, capable of extraordinary and hallucinatory evocative power." The Times" A Dark Stranger, Julien Gracq (Pushkin Press, GBP 12) The novelist Julien Gracq only died in 2007 but his strange, wonderfully written novels belong firmly in the 20th century though they were mainly inspired by German Romanticism. A Dark Stranger is dark itself, impeccably written and brilliantly evocative of a seaside resort and hotel in Brittany during the 1920s. When the novel opens, it is the end of June but still the summer season is not fully underway and the beach and the promenade of hotels seem quite deserted as the young man, Gerard, walks along them. This is an extract from his diary and his description of the sea sets the sinister tone for the rest of the book: '... between the piers, the silence of the swell against the stone side-walls was incredible; great big tongues, urgent and rough, yet agile, unsettling, shooting up suddenly like anteaters' tongues as they reached the sea-wall without warning, exploded in mid-air in an ice-cold spray. Two guests arrive in the hotel, and gradually the others come to realise that in the person of one of them, Allan, death has come to spend the summer there. Why Julien Gracq's novels are not better known in this country is a mystery. A Dark Stranger is powerful, unsettling, alarming and a compelling read. It was written while the author was in a prisoner of war camp - a fact which adds an extra, troubling dimension to the narrative."