Novel
Li Brak'nî
Not translated into English
Joseph Calozet · 1920
Synopsis
On a farm in Saint-Michel, near Awenne, in the Ardennes, young Marie loves Louis, a poacher: a tall, strapping fellow, hard-working, who comes to mow for the farm and whom her father esteems; poaching is not frowned upon in those parts. The village gamekeeper, jealous, dreams of catching him in the act. The drama takes shape when the forest ranger comes to ask for Marie's hand: her mother, who wants a husband with a secure salary for her daughter, prefers him to a poacher who may be sent to prison at any moment. Two suitors thus compete for the young woman.
Context
The first novel by its author, published in Liège by Vaillant-Carmanne in 1924, it opens the Ardennes tetralogy, which the Académie royale regards as his major work and which takes place entirely in Awenne and its surroundings; each of the four narratives revolves around a thwarted marriage or a girl caught between two suitors. Maurice Piron saw it as a poetic novel. Jean Haust later reissued it with a French translation, and critics, Marcel Thiry among them, have compared its picture of rural life to Tolstoy's.
Who it is for
A short novel in Ardennes Walloon, available in a bilingual edition in which the French follows the original text.
Prizes and reception
The most famous of its author's novels according to the Dictionnaire des Wallons, and the first of his Ardennes cycle.
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