A King Alone

"Langlois is as mysterious asSpade....The haunting beauty of this novel lies precisely in its lacunae. This is a book rich with details . . . everything except what we are most longing to know, Langlois’s thoughts. We must do all the work ourselves.” —Edmund White, The New York Review of Books “Strange and disquieting . . . the twisting narrative reads like a game of telephone passed through generations, with Langlois at the center as a sort of legendary totem to the villagers.” — Publishers Weekly “This immersive novel creates a memorably delirious sense of mystery, obsession, and altered perceptions.” — Kirkus “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 “Giono’s writing possesses a vigor, a surprising texture, a contagious joy, a sureness of touch and , an arresting originality, and that sort of unfeigned strangeness that always goes along with sincerity when it escapes from the ruts of convention.” —André Gide, unpublished letter, 1929