Le Bon Cœur
Prix Roman France TV
Prix Michel Dard
Prix littéraire de la Ville d'Arcachon
Prix du Roman historique - Les rendez-vous de l'histoire - Blois
- Vermillon
- Paru le 04/01/2018
- Genre : Littérature française
- 240 pages - 140 x 205 mm
- EAN : 9782710383208
- ISBN : 9782710383208
Foreign Rights
Le Bon Cœur
In Michel Bernard’s Le Bon Cœur, Joan of Arc’s story starts when the exasperated Lord of Baudricourt slaps a young peasant girl. In a France almost entirely occupied by the English, he is still holding onto a tiny territory along the Meuse River and this girl has returned to ask him for soldiers to restore the king to his throne. The Lord of Baudricourt knows that Joan isn’t insane – that would be too easy. He also knows that troubled times often give rise to visionaries and false prophets. And yet, like so many after him, he will give in to this strange young girl with her “tall frame, broad shoulders, solid stance, open face, and bright and penetrating eyes”.
It is no coincidence that Michel Bernard has taken an interest in one of France’s most famous figures. Joan embodies the major themes of his work and incarnates the title of another one of his books, The Body of France; a “body” that may appear destroyed at times, but that tirelessly comes back to life. Le Bon Coeur is not about scandalous revelations or unfounded hypotheses concerning Joan of Arc. In writing this novel, Michel Bernard had a different objective. Like a minstrel, he plunges us into a familiar story, or at least one that we think we know. He paints the landscapes with understated lyricism and describes the battles with such calm surprise that Joan materializes before us as she did before her contemporaries: self-evident and beyond the reach of men.
Le Bon Coeur is a novel about the voice of a seventeen-year-old peasant girl who saved France from falling into the abyss, and died for it. She changed the course of history by rekindling the strength to believe and to love in the weary hearts of men.
Michel Bernard was born in Bar-le-Duc. After La Tranchée de Calonne in 2007 (Prix Erckmann-Chatrian), he published at la Table Ronde, La Maison du docteur Laheurte(2008, Prix Maurice Genevoix), Le Corps de la France(2010, Prix Erwan Bergot de l’Armée de Terre), Pour Genevoix(2011), Les Forêts de Ravel(2015, Prix de la ville de Deauville) and Deux remords de Claude Monet (2016, Prix Libraires en Seine).
"A high-flying writer" Sud-Ouest Dimanche
"One of our greatest novelist of today" La Marseillaise
"A peerless stylist" France 3
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