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Albert Cohen
Albert Cohen was a Swiss diplomat and novelist best known for his 1968 book Belle du Seigneur. His writing examines the intensity of romantic obsession and the social hierarchies of the early twentieth century. He
Mangeclous
Synopsis
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.