Memoirs of a Breton Peasant

“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 Telegramme

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.

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