MERLE, Robert. Week-End at Zuydcoote
MERLE, Robert. Week-End at Zuydcoote. Trans. from the French by K. Rebillon-Lambley. London: John Lehmann. 1950. 8vo. First English language edition. Publisher’s red cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the wonderfully atmospheric dust jacket designed by Bateson Mason. A very good copy, the cloth clean, a trifle bumped at spine tips, the binding tight and gently rolled. Some very mild spots to the textblock edges, with a contemporary ink ownership inscription to the front endpaper, else fine. The dust jacket unclipped (9s 6d net), with some loss around the spine head leading into the rear and front panel, and another small portion of loss to front panel top edge. A few corners gently rubbed and nicked, but still a very handsome copy overall.
Robert Merle’s magnum opus, a tale of a band of lost and abandoned French soldiers stranded on the beach at Zuydcoote near Dunkirk, in the midst of the Britain’s desperate evacuation. Merle, a pacifist, was drafted as an interpreter at the beginning of the war, and by happenstance found himself what he later called in a “blind and abominable lottery” at Zuydcoote. Postwar, he completed the novel but struggled to get it published. Persuaded by Jean-Paul Sartre among others, publishers Gallimard eventually took it on in 1949. To much shock, it won the Prix Goncourt for that year. It was later made into a highly-rated film by Henri Verneuil. The novel remains one of the starkest accounts of the Second World War. In his obituary of Merle, James Kirkup called it “ the best modern novel about war, far surpassing Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead or James Jones's From Here to Eternity or Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy”. The jacket design—one of only a handful of designs by Bradford artist, Frank Bateson Mason—with our protagonist’s face in shadow and the black crashing waves, certainly captures Merle’s intended motive.
MERLE, Robert. Week-End at Zuydcoote. Trans. from the French by K. Rebillon-Lambley. London: John Lehmann. 1950. 8vo. First English language edition. Publisher’s red cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the wonderfully atmospheric dust jacket designed by Bateson Mason. A very good copy, the cloth clean, a trifle bumped at spine tips, the binding tight and gently rolled. Some very mild spots to the textblock edges, with a contemporary ink ownership inscription to the front endpaper, else fine. The dust jacket unclipped (9s 6d net), with some loss around the spine head leading into the rear and front panel, and another small portion of loss to front panel top edge. A few corners gently rubbed and nicked, but still a very handsome copy overall.
Robert Merle’s magnum opus, a tale of a band of lost and abandoned French soldiers stranded on the beach at Zuydcoote near Dunkirk, in the midst of the Britain’s desperate evacuation. Merle, a pacifist, was drafted as an interpreter at the beginning of the war, and by happenstance found himself what he later called in a “blind and abominable lottery” at Zuydcoote. Postwar, he completed the novel but struggled to get it published. Persuaded by Jean-Paul Sartre among others, publishers Gallimard eventually took it on in 1949. To much shock, it won the Prix Goncourt for that year. It was later made into a highly-rated film by Henri Verneuil. The novel remains one of the starkest accounts of the Second World War. In his obituary of Merle, James Kirkup called it “ the best modern novel about war, far surpassing Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead or James Jones's From Here to Eternity or Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy”. The jacket design—one of only a handful of designs by Bradford artist, Frank Bateson Mason—with our protagonist’s face in shadow and the black crashing waves, certainly captures Merle’s intended motive.
MERLE, Robert. Week-End at Zuydcoote. Trans. from the French by K. Rebillon-Lambley. London: John Lehmann. 1950. 8vo. First English language edition. Publisher’s red cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the wonderfully atmospheric dust jacket designed by Bateson Mason. A very good copy, the cloth clean, a trifle bumped at spine tips, the binding tight and gently rolled. Some very mild spots to the textblock edges, with a contemporary ink ownership inscription to the front endpaper, else fine. The dust jacket unclipped (9s 6d net), with some loss around the spine head leading into the rear and front panel, and another small portion of loss to front panel top edge. A few corners gently rubbed and nicked, but still a very handsome copy overall.
Robert Merle’s magnum opus, a tale of a band of lost and abandoned French soldiers stranded on the beach at Zuydcoote near Dunkirk, in the midst of the Britain’s desperate evacuation. Merle, a pacifist, was drafted as an interpreter at the beginning of the war, and by happenstance found himself what he later called in a “blind and abominable lottery” at Zuydcoote. Postwar, he completed the novel but struggled to get it published. Persuaded by Jean-Paul Sartre among others, publishers Gallimard eventually took it on in 1949. To much shock, it won the Prix Goncourt for that year. It was later made into a highly-rated film by Henri Verneuil. The novel remains one of the starkest accounts of the Second World War. In his obituary of Merle, James Kirkup called it “ the best modern novel about war, far surpassing Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead or James Jones's From Here to Eternity or Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour trilogy”. The jacket design—one of only a handful of designs by Bradford artist, Frank Bateson Mason—with our protagonist’s face in shadow and the black crashing waves, certainly captures Merle’s intended motive.