A fascinating document of an extraordinary life, Memoirs of A Breton Peasant reads with the liveliness of a novel and bristles with the vigor of an opinionated autodidact from the very lowest level of peasant society.
Born in 1834 near Quimper, in Brittany, to landless farmers, the
young JEAN-MARIE D GUIGNET was sent out several times a week to beg
for the family's food. After spending some of his adolescent years
as a cowherd and a domestic speaking only Breton, he left the
province as a soldier, avid for knowledge of the vast world. He
taught himself Latin, then French, then Italian and Spanish; he
read history and philosophy and politics and literature. He was
sent to fight in the Crimean war, to attend at Emperor Napoleon
III's coronation ceremonies, to support Italy's liberation
struggle, and to defend the hapless French puppet emperor
Maximilian in Mexico; he came home to live as a model farmer, a
tobacconist, falling back into dire poverty.
From the Hardcover edition.
"What makes it gripping reading is not only that it offers a rare
view of 19th-century French society from the bottom up; it is also
written from the perspective of a lifetime’s experience. He both
suffers and celebrates his suffering as the price of his
nonconformity. A fascinating account." —Alan Riding, New York Times
Book Review
"Linda Asher has now given Déguignet a splendidly faithful English
voice: pugnacious, tetchy and opinionated." —David Coward, London
Review of Books
"Never a dull moment in his company. Must be read." —Le
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