The Giants

A key novel from the 2008 Nobel Prize-winner for literature

Beautifully translated by Simon Watson-Taylor

The power of The Giants lies in its combination of stylistic virtuosity and political urgency

An author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization

J.M.G. Le Clézio was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 2008. He was born in Nice, France, in 1940 to a French mother and her first-cousin, a Mauritian doctor of French origin who, being born in Mauritius when the island was under British rule, held a British passport. However, the family was completely Francophone. Jean-Marie Le Clézio has travelled extensively and is articulate in English and Spanish, but his true homeland is very much the French language. He spends his time between France (Nice, Paris and Brittany), and Albuquerque New Mexico.He has published more than 40 books since he won the Renaudot Prize in 1963, age 23, with Le Procès-verbal (The Interrogation), and his works have been translated around the world into 36 languages.

Upon an immense stretch of flat ground at the mouth of a river bathed in sunlight rises Hyperpolis. It stands there, surrounded by its four asphalt car-parks, to condemn us - a huge enveloping supermarket. Each of us will see ourselves reflected in the characters who move mindlessly about Hyperpolis, but The Giants is a call to rebellion. This bold and inventive novel is the work of a tremendously talented writer and both an intoxicating and exhilarating read.

Persons still in two minds about the meaning of life would do well to study War

A density of marvellous prose shot through with jagged lightning-flashes of perception...What a writer!

War - in the mind of the fragile Bea B., in the infinite icy landscape she journeys through, in Vietnam, in 10,000 years of human history. The war of the title is not merely a war of arms but a generalised state of violence permeating every atom of Le Clézio's creation. Bea B. searches for clues for the origin of the evil. Under her searching gaze the most everyday objects - advertisements, cars, light bulbs - reveal extraordinary dimensions, as the earth trembles on the brink of cataclysmic explosion.

J.M.G. Le Clezio

Young Man Hogan's journey begins in the dazzling streets of a nameless necropolis, and leads across fleeting landscapes - deserts, seas, mountains, islands, cities and great plains - to countless entertainments and adventures in four continents. It is an exploration and a celebration, glittering and exuberant, of the writer's art and of life itself.

J.M.G. Le Clezio

Books by J.M.G. Le Clezio

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