by Xavier Hanotte · Tapa blanda · ISBN 9782714436801
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«Derrière la colline» is the novel by Xavier Hanotte, published in 2000 by Belfond in paperback (345 pages, in French).
A novel narrated in the first person by a British volunteer in the First World War: it portrays day-to-day life in the trenches and the horror of the Battle of the Somme, and interweaves that experience with a reflection on fate, identity and a disappointed love. The prose combines precision, poetry and stark realism.
The first edition appeared on 30 June 2000 and the novel was awarded the Prix Marcel Thiry in 2002.
For readers interested in the First World War and in historical novels with an introspective tone, with a literary rather than military perspective.
Xavier Hanotte is a Belgian writer. He was born in Mont-sur-Marchienne in 1960. He lives near Brussels. He studied the German language and entered a literary career through translation. He translated Dutch authors such as Hubert Lampo, and was particularly attached to the young English poet, Wilfred Owen, who died in 1918 a few days before the armistice. With Manière Noire, published in 1995, Hanotte commenced a romantic cycle around the character of Barthelemy Dussert, a Brussels police inspector who would become the literary alter ego of the writer. Dussert also appeared in De secrètes injustices (1998), Le Couteau de Jenufa (2008), and Derrière la colline which takes place on the Somme front during the First World War, and features a young poet named Nigel Parsons. The Great War also forms the backdrop of Lieux communs (2002). The 2010 novel Feux fragiles dans la nuit qui vient, set in an imaginary country, was compared to the work of Julien Gracq and Dino Buzzati.
