L1591
Gabriel Chevallier，恐懼（La peur），350頁。Le dilettante。2008。
售出版權：義大利、加泰羅尼亞、西班牙、德國、荷蘭、英國。
此書最早出版於1930年，一本描述恐怖經驗的自傳，面對兇殘血腥與徒勞無功的1914-1918第一次世界大戰。一心只想生存下去的毅力、一段不堪回首的往事，看作者如何絕地重生。
“Men are foolish and ignorant. Hence their misery. Instead of thinking, they believe what they are told, what they are taught. They choose leaders and masters without judging them, with a fatal taste for slavery. Men are sheep. Which is why armies and wars are possible. They die victims of their stupid docility.”
Published in 1930, this largely autobiographical novel tells of the terrible experiences of World War I soldiers confronted with the savagery and futility of that war. At Dilettante, we are not prone to the excessive use of superlatives, but this, without doubt, is a masterpiece. The book is not only a masterpiece, it also paints the portrait of a battered and bruised, deeply moving, unforgettable hero, Jean Dartemont.
This novel is certainly as strong as that other antiwar text Im Westen nichts Neue (All Quiet on the Western Front) (À l’Ouest rien de nouveau) by Erich Maria Remarque butit is much more than a damning indictment of the vile, barbaric horrors of military power that transform humanity into a herd of humiliated individuals. It is a humane and fraternal novel that depicts human folly, power struggles, animal impulses and that much talked-about story of submission and of real courage, or of human dignity, that inhabit us still today. It is a gripping and unsettling novel that reaches far beyond our imagination. A future great classic.
Gabriel Chevallier (1895-1969), known for his satire of village life (Clochemerle, 1934), published La Peur in 1930. He invented a narrator who resembles him. Dartemont is a young lad ready to bite into life, an innocent youth who wants to learn everything, seize everything, love, adventure, the arts, but who was called up in 1914 and sent to the front. Chevallier gives a vivid description of the four years of slaughter. He spares himself nothing, neither terrible memories nor bad thoughts. He writes of innocence, selfishness, humiliation, luck, vermin, boredom, shame, fear. Fear, that forbidden word. A soldier knows no fear. He marches forward for the honour of his country, or else it is the firing squad.
家西書社 jia-xi books co., ltd. 