Pays Perdu
We’ve seen lots of books like this - the writer is weary of city life and moves to a stone cottage in rural France for an idyllic lifestyle of wine and beautiful sunsets. It’s all perfect, you publish your book….. and then villagers attack you because you’ve portrayed them as an incestuous bunch of one-toothed freaks.
The Guardian has this very interesting tale. The writer is Pierre Jourde and the offending book is Pays Perdu (lost land).
In 2003, he published Pays Perdu, (Lost Land), a novel recounting the reality of life in this bleak and under-populated area he likened to Outer Mongolia. He described a place where the gods were called “Alcohol, Winter, Shit and Solitude”; where having one tooth was a status symbol akin to wearing a monocle and where an old lady let dead dogs decay in her bed, tucking herself up beside them every night.
