ABSTRACT
Jean Rouaud has been a popular novelist ever since 1990, when he won the Goncourt Prize for his first book, Les Champs d'honneur, later translated by Ralph Manheim as Fields of Glory. He artfully wove together cameos and vignettes in Fields of Glory, portraying in turn an unforgettable grandfather, a grandmother, great uncles, and other relatives, all the time employing a sometimes wry, sometimes acerbic realism. Reviving the elderly figures marking his childhood and adolescence, the narrator of Fields of Glory explores how he became acutely aware of the ephemerality of happiness, as the passing away of each relative—whether known in real life or only through family tales—represents a stage in his own apprenticeship of living. Rouaud retrieves from oblivion the essential fragments of otherwise commonplace lives—lives that indeed unfold on a "field of glory," however insignificant they at first glance seem. Between the lines of a highly accomplished style is a compassionate humanism.
