Innocence

Description

The murder of a Resistance hero leads a young boy to discover a meaning to life - and love June 1945. The war is over. Early one morning in the hills of Provence, Pierrot, a fifteen-year-old boy out hunting for snails, stumbles across the dead body of Capitaine Patrocle, a celebrated hero of the Resistance. He has been murdered. In the dead man's wallet Pierrot discovers a letter which he conceals under his beret. Its contents provide the key to the dramatic events that lie at the heart of this haunting and unforgettable story of illicit passions and lead, subsequently, to the boy's association with the tragic and beautiful Madame Henry and to his introduction to the mysteries of love.

Pierre Magnan was born in Manosque in 1922 and has rarely left his native Provence. In 1943, during the Occupation, he fought with the Resistance in the Is re, and in 1946 he published his first novel, L'Aube Insolite. During his lifetime he published over twenty novels, four of which have so far been translated into English. He died in May 2012, at the age of 89.

Magnan's evocation of sun-baked landscapes and small-town Provencal life... is superb * The Times *