• Occupation Journal
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Archipelago Books

Occupation Journal

Occupation Journal

by Jean Giono, translated from the French by Jody Gladding

$18.00
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Written during the years of France's occupation by the Nazis, Jean Giono's Occupation Journal reveals the inner workings of one of France's great literary minds during the country's darkest hour. A renowned writer and committed pacifist throughout the 1930s and 1940s – a conviction that resulted in his imprisonment before and after the Occupation – Giono spent the war in the town of Manosque in Provence, where he wrote, corresponded with other writers, and cared for his family. This journal records his musings on art and literature, his observations of life, his interactions with the machinery of the collaborationist Vichy regime, as well as his forceful political convictions. Giono recounts the details of his life with fierce independence of thought and novelistic attention to character and dialogue. Occupation Journal is a fascinating historical document as well as a unique window into one of French literature's most voracious and critical minds.

Additional Book Information

Series: Archipelago Books
ISBN: 9781939810564
Pages: 200
Publication Date:

Praise

Jean Giono’s Occupation Journal is a fascinating record of life under Nazi occupation in France, and an insight into the daily reading and writing practices of a dedicated author . . . To a timely effect, many of Giono’s reflections also tackle the problem of isolation, of drawing upon inner resources, and of the consolation of literature . . . The journals in their entirety compose a captivating account of a sensitive, dedicated writer’s quotidian life, and an insight into how he faced both the exterior and interior struggles of his time.
—Sarah Moore, Asymptote Journal

Jody Gladding has beautifully rendered Giono’s inner voice, in all its moods and registers, lyrical, cynical, and reflective.
—Paul Eprile

For Giono, literature and reality overlap the way that waves sweep over the shore, one ceaselessly refreshing the other and, in certain wondrous moments, giving it a glassy clearness.
—Ryu Spaeth, The New Republic

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