Mangeclous

Written on the eve of the Second World War but set in 1936, Mangeclous follows five Jewish cousins from the Greek island of Cephalonia — the "Valeureux" — led by the incorrigible liar and schemer Mangeclous, on a rambling, comic journey across the Mediterranean to Marseille and on to Geneva.

Beneath its picaresque humor, the novel carries a current of dread at the rise of Hitler and the question of Jewish identity in a Europe sliding toward war. The second novel in Albert Cohen's Solal cycle, between Solal and Belle du Seigneur.