The Widow Couderc (Romans Durs)
About this ebook
Two strangers meet on a bus along a dusty road in rural France. Tati is a tough, work-worn widow, who runs the farm her late husband left behind, while trying to keep out of the way of her predatory in-laws. Jean is an odd, quiet man, recently out of prison, and in search of a new life. These lost souls recognize something in each other, and Jean becomes Tati’s lodger and farmworker.
In the still and heat of the summer, the pair labor together and, inevitably, begin to sleep together. Soon, however, their strange affair will become something altogether darker. First published in 1942 at the same time as Albert Camus’s The Outsider, The Widow Couderc is Georges Simenon’s existentialist masterpiece, the story of fatal attraction, an unsettling exploration of who we are and what we desire.
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About the author
Georges Simenon (1903–1989) was born in Liège, Belgium. An intrepid traveler with a profound interest in people, Simenon strove on and off the page to understand—and not to judge—the human condition in all its shades. His books 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.
Siân Reynolds was born in Cardiff, and taught at both the University of Sussex and the University of Edinburgh before serving as chair of French at the University of Stirling from 1990 to 2004. She has translated numerous books from the French, both fiction and nonfiction, including works by the crime writer Fred Vargas.
