Author(s): Jean-Baptiste Del Amo; Frank Wynne (Editor)

Novel | Translated fiction | France | Crime and Thriller

In the soft morning light, a man, a woman, and a child drive to Les Roches, a dilapidated house, where the man grew up with his own ruthless father. After several years of absence, the man has reappeared in the life of his wife and their young son, intent on being a family again. While the mother watches the passing days with apprehension, the son discovers the enchantment of nature.

As the father's hold over them intensifies, the return to their previous life and home seems increasingly impossible. Haunted by his past and consumed with jealousy, the father slips into a kind of madness that only the son will be able to challenge.

Written in flawless, cinematic prose, and brilliantly translated by Frank Wynne, The Son of Manis an exceptional novel of nature and wildness, and a blistering examination of how families fold together and break apart under duress.

Jean-Baptiste Del Amowas born in 1981 and is one of France's most exciting writers. Animalia, his fourth novel, published by Text in 2019, won the Prix du Livre Inter 2017 and the 2020 Republic of Consciousness Prize, and was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt, Prix Femina, Prix Medicis and Prix Wepler. The Son of Man, published by Gallimard in 2021, is his second novel to appear in English.

Frank Wynnehas translated works by authors including Michel Houellebecq, Patrick Modiano, Virginie Despentes and Mathias Enard. His work has earned many awards, including the IMPAC Prize, the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the Premio Valle Inclán and the International Dublin Literary Award.

'Del Amo gives a soul to this drama. We oscillate constantly between nature writing, a fable and a psychological novel.' Livres Hebdo

'The simple plot becomes as complex as the psychology of these human beasts...Rarely has this young author hit the right notes so perfectly.' Le Monde

'Many magnificent scenes--brief moments of light amidst the darkness and a fear so intense you could cut it with a knife.' Le Figaro Littéraire

‘The Son of Man is an astonishing book. Beautifully written, devastating at times, and relentless, but unforgettable.’
— Michael Magee, author of Close to Home

‘The Son of Man is an explosion, a shout. Jean-Baptiste Del Amo is a storming talent; here are words which are forged rather than written, smeared with blood.’
— Daisy Johnson, author of Sisters

‘An exquisite and mesmerizing novel, in which violence constantly threatens to break the surface. The precision and detail of the prose imprints on the mind like a photograph.’
— Isabella Hammad, author of Enter Ghost

‘The Son of Man demands a fearless kind of reading. It combines the impassive eye of a naturalist regarding their object of study, with the fierce revolt of that which is scrutinised, and resists being catalogued and known. Del Amo reaches into atavistic territories of impulse, desire, violence and repetition, and refuses to domesticate through conclusion. I was mesmerised by this formidable tale of a son and a mother who come up against both the law of the father and the lawlessness of nature’
— Daisy Lafarge, author of Lovebug

‘The theme of transmission between father and son is at the heart of the novel. It is marked by a macabre determinism, everything is already played for, poisoned. A wandering insane grandfather casts a shadow and bad luck ricochets on his descendants. Jean-Baptiste Del Amo does not shy away from showing the atrocious. He has several strings to his hunter’s bow; an art of careful framing, of scenic observation. A taste for the primeval drive mixed with intuitions and perceptions.… There are many magnificent scenes, such as the son swimming in the river with his mother. Brief moments of light amidst the darkness and a fear so intense you could cut it with a knife.'
— Le Figaro Littéraire

‘With The Son of Man, Jean-Baptiste Del Amo focuses intensely on the imperceptible tipping point in violence.... [A] horror reminiscent of The Shining in this huis clos with an open sky.’
— Elle Magazine

‘In The Son of Man the simple plot becomes as complex as the psychology of these human beasts. The writing is never precious, always precise. As the tension mounts, the sentences become longer and meandering, elusive like erupting violence. Rarely has a 39-year-old author hit the right notes so perfectly in the way he stretches his fiction.’
— Le Monde

‘Jean-Baptiste Del Amo signs here a story of rare power that does not let go of the reader until the last page. The writing is dazzling. One of the most brilliant authors of his generation.’
— RTL

Praise for Animalia

‘If EM Cioran, the great Romanian philosopher of the bleak, had been a novelist, Animalia is the kind of novel he would have produced [and] it is likely to be hailed as a modern classic.’
— Ian Sansom, Guardian

‘This is an extraordinary book. A dark saga related in sprawling sentences, made denser still by obscure and difficult vocabulary, it is everything I usually hate in a novel. Instead, I was spellbound.’
— David Mills, Sunday Times

‘Del Amo has Flaubert’s flair for performance ... His prose leaps out at the reader, gleaming with perfection.’
— Ankita Chakraborty, New York Times Book Review