Where the Grass no longer Grows

Where the Grass no longer Grows is based on events at the French village of Oradour-sur-Glane in June 1944 when the SS massacred 642 men, women and children. This novel, the only fictional recreation of the massacre, follows the fate of a number of characters both inside and outside the village as they become aware of and respond to the unfolding horror.

"When I set out to read this book, I thought it would just be a fairly straightforward account of that awful day. However, Magnane shows himself to be a skilled writer, giving us an almost Gionoesque portrayal of an ordinary French village with ordinary people in it. Some are good, some less so. They fall in love, have children, work fairly hard, drink, argue, mock, chat with their neighbors . They misbehave – drink, children out of wedlock, a bit of minor violence. They had been fortunate, as much of the worst of the war had passed them by. The few survivors, both those who arrived later and the very few who were there, are naturally devastated and Magnane skillfully shows how difficult it is to put your life together after going through what they did."
- John Alvey in The Modern Novel

Georges Magnane (1907 - 1985) was the pen-name of René Catinaud, born into a farming family in the Limousin, central France. He went from there to the Ecôle Normale d’instituteurs in Paris before completing his studies in Oxford. As well as being a teacher and novelist, Magnane was a journalist (he covered the 1948 London Olympics for Sartre’s L’humanité) a pioneer of the sociology of sport in France, a translator (notably of Updike, Nabokov and Capote), and a scriptwriter for theater and film.

Jerome Fletcher was Director of Writing at Dartington College of Arts and Associate Professor of Performance Writing at Falmouth University. He has published novels and poetry for children, translations, and experimental digital texts as well as performance works.

Along with Alex Martin, he has produced several titles for Dedalus including The Decadent Cookbook, The Decadent Gardener. Former real tennis professional and elver catcher, Jerome Fletcher was Director of Writing at The Decadent Traveller and The Decadent Sportsman.

He lives in France near Limoges.