The Flanders Road.

SIMON, Claude.

Item Number: 118563

New York: George Braziller, 1961.

First edition in English of the Nobel Prize-winning author’s classic work. Octavo, original cloth. Signed by Claude Simon on the title page. Fine in a near fine dust jacket with a touch of shelfwear. Jacket design by Sydney Butchkes. Translated from the French by Richard Howard.

During the German advance through Belgium into France in 1940, Captain de Reixach is shot dead by a sniper. Three witnesses, involved with him during his lifetime in different capacities - a distant relative, an orderly and a jockey who had an affair with his wife - remember him and help the reader piece together the realities behind the man and his death. A groundbreaking work, for which Claude Simon devised a prose technique mimicking the mind's flexible thought processes, "The Flanders Road" is not only a masterpiece of stylistic innovation, but also a haunting portrayal - based on a real-life incident - of the chaos and savagery of war.