I look at the village, and I see the adults working, not answering, and forcing themselves to bury the stubborn secrets that bind them. I look at the Idiot, his bed, his lady, his animals and their cruel fate, often. I hide in the fields and the forests, like the old gray boar, like the workman who went missing, and I wade waist deep into the river with two beds where the catfish sleep. And finally, I raise my face to the sky, open my mouth and drink in the rain, drink in the sun, and look beyond the infinite universe I’m a part of that the teacher points out to us, while we enjoy ourselves at school, indifferent to the tragedy that awaits us.

In this extraordinarily lucid first novel, Jean Luc Cattacin looks through a child’s eyes to shed both affectionate and violent light on ordinary people.

What does it take for a debut novel to reach a state of grace? A sense of rhythm, surely; simple, pure images that dig deep into the stuff that reality is made of; boundless generosity for men and beasts. The chapters roll out like so many scenes from daily life that reverberate off one another. Until the tragic denouement that ties the land of men to the eternal movement of the stars.