The Cattle Car: Including "Letter to a Little Girl

In this first English translation of Georges Hyvernaud's autobiographical novel The Cattle Car, the narrator, who has come back to France after imprisonment in Germany, is preoccupied with the near impossibility of writing a novel about his experiences. At the same time, he attempts to function normally in a world that seems to have changed radically. Bouncing back and forth from the existential hell of postwar France to the truer one he endured during the war, the narrator works on his memoir, "The Cattle Car" while struggling as a laborer in a monotonous life lived amidst mediocre people.

The book also includes "Letter to a Little Girl," Hyvernaud's eloquent open letter to his daughter describing his wartime imprisonment.

Georges Hyvernaud (1902-83) was a professor of literature at the École Noramle in Arras, France, when he was conscripted at the start of World War II. Given the rank of lieutenant, he was captured with his unit in 1940 and impounded in several Pomeranian camps. In January 1945 he returned to France, carrying with him notebooks filled with notes that would become his two books. Hyvernaud's memoir of his wartime experiences, Skin and Bones, is available from The Marlboro Press.

Dominic Di Bernardi has translated the works of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Emmanuel Bove, and Simone de Beauvoir. He lives in Philadelphia.

Austryn Wainhouse is an author, translator, and the founder of The Marlboro Press. He lives in France and Vermont.