The Solitude of Compassion


The Solitude of Compassion is a 1932 short story collection by the French writer Jean Giono. The stories focus on rural life in Provence. The book was published in English in 2002, translated by Edward Ford.

Stories

  1. The Solitude of Compassion
  2. Prelude to Pan
  3. Fields
  4. Ivan Ivanovitch Kossiakoff
  5. The Hand
  6. Annette or A Family Affair
  7. On the Side of the Road
  8. Jofroi de Maussan
  9. Philmon
  10. Joselet
  11. Sylvie
  12. Babeau
  13. The Sheep
  14. In the Land of the Tree Cutters
  15. The Great Fence
  16. The Destruction of Paris
  17. Magnetism
  18. Fear of the Land
  19. Lost Rafts
  20. Song of the World

    Reception

Kirkus Reviews wrote in 2002: "Although most of the pieces here, first published in France in 1932, are set in the hamlets and countryside of Provence, they bring us into a world that is dark, spiteful, and lugubrious: a world of hard-hearted peasants bent on squeezing the life out of their neighbors much as they squeeze oil from their olives.... Like Faulkner, Giono takes us into an unpleasant world shot through with strange and unexpected beauty."

Adaptations

The story "Jofroi de Maussan" was the basis for the 1934 film Jofroi directed by Marcel Pagnol. Between 1987 and 1990, France 2 made a series of six Giono adaptations under the title L'ami Giono, of which three were based on stories from The Solitude of Compassion: Jofroi de la Maussan, Solitude de la pitié and Ivan Ivanovitch Kossiakoff.