The Flanders Road
Claude Simon · 1913–2005 · France
Originally La Route des Flandres (French)
Why it matters
A cavalry officer's death during the 1940 French collapse is circled obsessively in fragmented, barely punctuated memory. Simon's Nobel-winning fusion of Faulknerian technique and the nouveau roman's formal rigor.
At a glance
war novelmodernist
Difficulty 9/10slow pace230 pagesFragmented, barely punctuated memory circling one moment obsessively.
