“Langlois is as mysterious as Sam Spade….The haunting beauty of this novel lies precisely in its lacunae. This is a book rich with details . . . everything except what we are most longing to know, Langlois’s thoughts. We must do all the work ourselves.” —Edmund White, The New York Review of Books
“Strange and disquieting . . . the twisting narrative reads like a game of telephone passed through generations, with Langlois at the center as a sort of legendary totem to the villagers.” —Publishers Weekly
“This immersive novel creates a memorably delirious sense of mystery, obsession, and altered perceptions.” —Kirkus
“For Giono, literature and reality overlap the way that waves sweep over the shore, one ceaselessly refreshing the other and, in certain wondrous moments, giving it a glassy clearness.” —Ryu Spaeth, The New Republic
“Giono’s writing possesses a vigor, a surprising texture, a contagious joy, a sureness of touch and design, an arresting originality, and that sort of unfeigned strangeness that always goes along with sincerity when it escapes from the ruts of convention.” —André Gide, unpublished letter, 1929
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