Calvary

Calvary - Octave Mirbeau

Calvary: A Novel is the English translation of Le Calvaire (1886), the first novel published under his own name by the French writer Octave Mirbeau (1848-1917), one of the most outspoken and controversial authors of the Belle Époque.

In this book Calvary, the narrator Jean Mintié looks back on his life: a lonely childhood in the provinces, his traumatic experiences as a soldier in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and above all his destructive, all-consuming passion for the beautiful and unfaithful Juliette Roux in Paris. The novel is partly autobiographical and was considered shocking in its day, both for its unflinching depiction of obsessive love and for its critical portrayal of war.

‘Years and years have passed. Everything that I loved is now dead. Everything that I knew has taken on a new appearance. The church has been rebuilt… But things and people are engraved so profoundly upon my memory that time could not apply a burnisher hard enough to erase them.'

Octave Mirbeau, best known for The Torture Garden and The Diary of a Chambermaid, was a journalist, art critic and novelist who championed painters such as Monet, Van Gogh and Rodin and fiercely criticised the hypocrisy of his time.

A powerful and intense novel for anyone interested in French literature, the nineteenth century, psychological fiction and the darker sides of love.