Title: The Boy - Marcus Malte - book
Summary :
He has no name. He doesn't speak. The boy is a near-savage, born in an arid region of southern France. Of the world, he knows only his mother and the surroundings of their cabin. It is 1908 when he sets out on his journey—by instinct. Then begins his encounter with men: the inhabitants of a remote hamlet, Brabek the ogre from the Carpathians, philosopher and fairground wrestler, and his carnal love with Emma, a luminous music lover who is at once sister, lover, and mother. "It is a time when the boy begins to glimpse what existence might, alas, be made of: a great deal of devastation and a few raptures." Then comes the war, the terrible carnage, the height of human madness and of what we call civilization. The journey of a new soul awakening to consciousness through chance and a few necessities, punctuated by the small and large upheavals of History, The Boy is, in its own singular, radical, funny, and serious way, the immense novel of the world's ordeal. Marcus Malte was born in 1967 in La Seyne-sur-Mer. He is the author of several novels and collections of short stories, including Garden of Love (awarded a dozen literary prizes, including the Grand Prix des lectrices de Elle, crime fiction category) and, more recently, Les Harmoniques.