SOURCE: Brée, Germaine, and Margaret Guiton. “Private Worlds.” In An Age of Fiction, pp. 107-13. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1957.

In the following excerpt from their full-length study of contemporary French novelists, Brée and Guiton note that Giono is unlike most of his literary contemporaries in his preference for isolated rural settings and his visionary themes.

Jean Giono's native province is not far distant from [Henri] Bosco's, a little more to the north, a little further to the east; yet nothing could be more different than the use these two writers make of their setting. Giono's universe is animated to the point of agitation. Everything in his novels is in motion, and everyone is engaged in some precise action. Born in the Alpes Maritimes, Giono likes to situate his tales, not in his native village of Manosque, but in the distant hills, sparsely populated plateaux and...