Le Calvaire

Le Calvaire is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, which recounts the tortured and traumatic coming of age of the narrator Jean Mintie.

It paints a nightmarish picture of late nineteenth century French society: from the stultifying boredom of bourgeois provincialism, to the horrors of the Franco-Prussian war, the grotesque avarice of shameless women and the moral bankruptcy of their compliant victims. Mintie's progress through life is a descent into Hell, a plumbing of the lower depths, the martyrdom of a godless man in a godless age.

The publication of Le Calvaire in 1886 marked a brilliant beginning for the Angry Young Man of the Age, who went on to flay the Establishment in Torture Garden and The Diary of a Chambermaid.

• Author
• Octave Mirbeau, Christine Donougher

• Format
• paperback

• Pages
• 223

• Publisher
• Dedalus

• Language
• english

• ISBN
• 9780946626991

• Genres
• fiction, literature, france

• Release date
• 1997