The Young Man from Savoy by C-F Ramuz

translated by Blake Robinson

The Young Man from Savoy is the story of Joseph Jacquet, "a young man unlike others." The existence of this village boy, hired out as a hand on a schooner, seems fated to unravel from the moment he glimpses the mesmerizing Miss Anabella, a high-wire artiste with a traveling circus. She becomes the object of Joseph's fantasizing obsession, and a catalyst for the bizarre and brutal acts that ensue.

Set at the beginning of the twentieth century in a French mountainside village overlooking Lake Geneva, this tale of all-consuming love plays out against a backdrop that is at once idyllic and askew. Vividly imagined and masterfully wrought, The Young Man from Savoy is a meditative page-turner, a novel whose spare, mutedly lyrical prose stands in contrast to the dramatic tale it recounts. In this remarkable work, acclaimed French Swiss writer C-F Ramuz has left us a lasting legacy, a work of laconic and unsettling power.

Praise for Ramuz and The Young Man from Savoy:

I know of no other writer who has been able to ask the great metaphysical questions in terms of objects, elementary sensations, little everyday phrases.

– Denis de Rougemont, author of Love in the Western World

C-F Ramuz is without doubt one of French Switzerland's literary heavyweights, along with Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Benjamin Constant. Blake Robinson's translation captures the flow and cadence of Ramuz's poetic vision of the Lake of Geneva.

– Martin Sokolinsky, translator of A Father's Love

An impressive small novel of searching for the absolute... a remarkable find, and well worthwhile.

– The Complete Review

8.5" x 5.5"
148 pages