The Young Man from Savoy

Fiction. Translated from the French 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.