Product Description

In the village of Aubignane only three inhabitants remain - the blacksmith, a widow and Panturle, the hunter. Soon Panturle is abandoned and begins to lose his mind. But then a woman arrives and life is restored to the village as Panturle plants wheat to produce a second harvest.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #410093 in Books
• Published on: 1999-04-01
• Format: Illustrated
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 112 pages

From the Back Cover

"To no author I have recommended has there been a response such as hailed the reading of Giono. The reactions have been virtually unanimous. 'Magnificent' - that is the usual return...Giono gives us the world we live in, a world of dream, passion and reality"

-Henry Miller.

Panturle lives in the village of Aubignane, in the Provencal uplands. He is a huge man: "When he met a living animal, he looked at it without moving: it was a fox, a hare, or a big snake in the rubble. He did not move; he took his time. He knew that somewhere in a bush there was a wire noose which strangled necks that passed him by." Aubignane was a deserted village. That autumn Gaubert the smithy, "a little man all moustache", left; and before the winter was out the well-sinker's window had left as well.

Then only Panturle remained, a man made morose almost to the point of madness by his solitude. He gave up planting and lived off what he could catch. Then out of the blue a woman arrived, someone to live for, someone to till the soil for and plant new seed. Even a village can e raised from the dead.

Second Harvest is steeped in the poetry of the countryside and the seasons. Those who have read the author's The Man who Planted Trees do not need to ask why Jean Giono remains one of the enduring French storytellers of this century.

"One of the greatest writers of our generation"

-Andre Malraux

Customer Reviews

Superb, earthy
Do yourself a favour & read this wonderful story by an empathetic, deep author who deserves far greater renown than much lauded dried up misanthropes like Sartre; instead an author with a real feel for the intrinsic depths & significance of life & unheralded lives lived. Deeply humane, simple & profound.

deep delight
This has to be my choice for best book I've read this year. It is deeply sensitive, evocative, beautifully described. The story of an almost abandoned hamlet in the french mountains, on the Spanish border, Second Harvest is a tale of finely felt human experience, of love and courage, and the new life that love brings. it is full of magic, and a warming and uplifting of the heart. i want to give everyone a copy for Christmas ;-)