The Foundling's War

Praise for Michel Déon

‘Our lives would be all the richer if we read a Michel Déon novel – a modern classic’ William Boyd

‘A splendid mixture of acerbic asides and bright invention, [The Foundling’s War] reads admirably in Julian Evans’s excellent translation’ Times Literary Supplement

‘I loved this book for the way, in its particularities and its casual narration, it admitted me to a world I knew nothing about… It is not just a glimpse into the past, but the study of the heart of a man and his times’ Paul Theroux

‘Inspired by Henry Fielding’s 18th-century novel Tom Jones… As witty as its English forebear but with French savoir-faire, The Foundling Boy may win new readers for books translated from French’ New York Times

‘Mature, relaxed storytelling, balancing human nature with historical inevitability; a pleasure for traditionalists generally and Francophiles in particular’ Kirkus reviews

‘An underreported entrance into the forum of American letters’ Andrew Mitchell Davenport, Full Stop

‘An enjoyable read that doesn’t try too hard to be anything more than a very entertaining story and yet still hits home sufficiently hard as to the state of the nation and society in those strange decades’ The Complete Review

‘Quiet, wryly funny prose … a delight’ Independent on Sunday

‘It is shamefully parochial of us that this eminent writer has been so ignored by the anglophone world’ Sunday Times

‘A big-hearted coming-of-age shaggy-dog story … [Déon’s] novel leaves you feeling better about life’ The Spectator

‘Remarkable … Rooted in 19th-century realism but profoundly subversive of its conventions … Deserves a place alongside Flaubert’s Sentimental Education and Le Grand Meaulnes’ New Statesman