SOURCE: "L'Enfant," in his Feet First: Jules Vallès, University of Glasgow French and German Publications, 1992, pp. 89-116.

In the following excerpt, Redfern examines the first book of Vallès's Vingtras trilogy, L'Enfant, focusing on Vallès's use of sensory detail and his keen perception of the joys and injustices of childhood and education.

In Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco writes: 'The literature of memory: he knew himself that it was the last refuge of scoundrels'. Sometimes, no doubt, but for Vallès the past was the true homeland. The only convincing fiction he could write (and he applied the same criterion to other writers) was born when he could master his facts. If home is 'the place where, when you have to go there, / They have to take you in',¹ it is also starting blocks. By the standards of ordinary success, Vallès, who never called his three...