Book of Nights (Verba Mundi Series) - Hardcover

Germain, Sylvie

3.96

397 ratings by Goodreads

9780879239756: Book of Nights (Verba Mundi Series)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879239751 ISBN 13: 9780879239756

Publisher: Verba Mundi, 1994

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The Book of Nights marks the American debut of one of Europe's most powerful and celebrated young writers. Winner of six literary prizes, The Book of Nights combines the timeless power of medieval legend, the resonance of Greek tragedy, and the harsh immediacy of a newsreel.
Sylvie Germain traces a century in the life of the Peniel family, and especially of the Victor-Flandrin Peniel (nicknamed Night-of-gold-Wolf-face because of the hereditary gold fleck in the eye). It is Victor-Flandrin-larger than life yet fully human-who acts as focal point for the intertwined stories of the Peniels (including Victor's four wives and fifteen children); of their lovers and enemies; and of the endless cycle of birth and death, triumph and loss, madness and passion, eroticism and holocaust-from the Franco-Prussian War to World War II-that envelops and buffets their lives. Blending the historical with the supernatural, the comic with the grotesque, the lyrical and the brutal, Sylvie Germain tells the story of humanity's strivings and vanity, of the profound injustices that govern our relations, and of the fundamental strength that allows us ultimately to triumph over carnage and degradation. The Book of Nights is a "powerfully, deeply felt, imaginative" book (The Times Literary Supplement) by a fresh and compelling new voice.

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Language Notes:

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

From Kirkus Reviews:

Germain's sixth book is her first to appear in English: a poetic saga that sweeps its way through a century of French history by following the generations of a symbol-rich family. First in the publisher's new Verba Mundi series of modern-world literature. ``In those days the Peniels were still fresh-water people,'' begins the story, sometime before 1870 and the Franco-Prussian War. A riverman who captains a barge named The Mercy of God all but gives up on fatherhood before his wife Vitalie, following six stillbirths, delivers a fine boy--and the saga begins. Theodore- Faustin Peniel, soft of voice and shy of manner, will grow up, marry out of passionate love, have children, but then become changed forever when he's hideously deformed in the battle of Sedan. Madness, sorrow--and incestuous love with his own daughter- -will result in the birth of Victor-Flandrin, who because of a fleck of gold in his left eye is known as ``Night-of-Gold.'' In time, carrying with him seven tears wept by his father and the quivering light of his mother's shadow (which protects him even from a wolf), Victor-Flandrin settles in a farm village called Blackland--where he will have 15 children by five wives, and live through WW I (although a son won't) and WW II (although many, including a wife and children, won't) before his own humble and yet majestic death. Germain succumbs at times to a pseudo-biblical saga-style (``And their hearts in turn had taken root, even flowering like wild roses...''), or descends to a philosophic rudimentism (``Only the earth remained inalterably the same...''), but her genuine lyric and narrative powers--a bleeding birthmark, a tamed wolf, grievous deaths, miraculous loves--on balance keep her craft grandly asail. Sometimes short on inner energy, but, overall, a gloriously beautiful, gem-studded tapestry of human desire and suffering. -- Copyright �1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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