The Strangers in the House

byGeorges Simenon, Howard Curtis (Translator)
Hector Loursat, a lawyer in the small town of Moulins, has lived as a drunken recluse since his wife left him eighteen years previously. Unmoored from society and estranged from his daughter, he shuts himself away, numbed by endless bottles of burgundy. But when a dead man is found in his house one night, the resulting police investigation unearths secrets that shake the town - and Loursat's isolation - to the core. No longer able to ignore the world, he emerges to take on the murder case himself and confront the lives of Moulins' by-ways and back streets.

In the progressive break-down of Loursat's self-imposed isolation, Simenon brilliantly depicts the psychology of loneliness and a man's tortured re-engagement with humanity and its darkest acts.

Quite simply a masterpiece

John Banville

About Georges Simenon

Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium in 1903. An intrepid traveller with a profound interest in people, Simenon strove on and off the page to understand, rather than to judge, the human condition in all its shades. His novels include the Inspector Maigret series and a richly varied body of wider work united by its evocative power, its economy of means, and its penetrating psychological insight. He is among the most widely read writers in the global canon. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.
Details
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • ISBN: 9780241487099
  • Length: 224 pages
  • Dimensions: 198mm x 13mm x 131mm
  • Weight: 175g
  • Price: £8.99
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