User:Stadtpark/Les Géants (novel)

Les Géants is the title of a novel written in French by French author and Nobel laureate J. M. G. Le Clézio and translated into English as The Giantswhich was published by Atheneum and Jonathan Cape.

Subject
Upon an immense stretch of flat ground at the mouth of a river bathed in sunlight rises Hyperpolis. It stands there, surrounded by its four asphalt car-parks, to condemn us – a huge enveloping supermarket. Each of us will see ourselves reflected in the characters who move mindlessly about Hyperpolis, but The Giants is a call to rebellion. This bold and inventive novel is the work of a tremendously talented writer and both an intoxicating and exhilarating read

Reviews

 * 1) Times literary Supplement( TLS)(5/10/1973) wrote that in terms of both intellectual adequacy and formal control Les Géantes might be the outcome of a creative writing project carried out by half-a-dozen schoolgirls as the culminating exrecise of a course in "environment studies" or the "consumer society" (half-a-dozen to explain the otherwise inexplicable length and repetitiveness of the piece)|G. Craig, TLS (5/10/1973)}}
 * 2) John Sutherland of The Times Literary Supplement (TLS)  wrote in January of 1976 that  Le Clézio wrote  The Giants' in unremitting loftiness of manner.John Sutherland suspects that chauvinist outrage against the encroachments of the American supermarket on peculiarly French traditions is the underlying motivation of The Giants'.  The Giants'has the cultivated brilliance which one associates, rightly or wrongly, with prize-winning French novelists. Composition and verbal varnish are very much in evidence. What is surprising is the simplicity of the novel's message -- it's even surprising that such a novel should have a message at all. (...) But the power of The Giants lies in its combination of stylistic virtuosity and political urgency.|, TLS

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