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'A unique teller of tales ... What interested Simenon was the average man losing control of his own fate' Observer
'She was beautiful, full of vitality, and he was sixteen years older, a dusty, lonely bookseller whose only passion in life was collecting stamps.'
Jonas is used to his young wife disappearing. Everyone in the town knows that she goes off with other men. This time, however, he tells a small lie to protect her, saying she is visiting a school friend. It is a lie, however, that eats into him like an illness, provoking hostility and resentment of this timid little Russian-Jewish bookseller, who always thought he had been accepted. As suspicion mounts, his true, terrifying isolation is revealed.
About the author
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.
Summary
'A unique teller of tales ... What interested Simenon was the average man losing control of his own fate' Observer
'She was beautiful, full of vitality, and he was sixteen years older, a dusty, lonely bookseller whose only passion in life was collecting stamps.'
Jonas is used to his young wife disappearing. Everyone in the town knows that she goes off with other men. This time, however, he tells a small lie to protect her, saying she is visiting a school friend. It is a lie, however, that eats into him like an illness, provoking hostility and resentment of this timid little Russian-Jewish bookseller, who always thought he had been accepted. As suspicion mounts, his true, terrifying isolation is revealed.
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A unique teller of tales ... What interested Simenon was the average man losing control of his own fate Observer
