'Vintage Simenon, a dark masterpiece . . . eerily prophetic' John Banville, Guardian
'It's not because you're foreigners. It's because you aren't foreign enough . . . or else that you are too foreign'
Just as the Krull house sits on the edge of a rural French town, the family occupies a marginal place in the life of the community around them. Snubbed by the locals despite having lived there for decades, they rely on trade with passing sailors to earn a living. When their relative arrives unannounced from Germany, with his unsettling, nonchalant ways, the family becomes the target of increasing suspicion and the scapegoat for a terrible crime.
Written on the eve of the Second World War, The Krull House is a taut, strangely prophetic novel about how distrust and hostility towards outsiders descends into hate-filled violence.
'Simenon lays out with ruthless exactitude the way selfish, conscience-free greed exploits modest, hospitable decency . . . The world of Chez Krull is a common, shared one' Julian Barnes, London Review of Books
| ISBN: | 9780241453414 |
| Publication date: | 1st October 2020 |
| Author: | Georges Simenon |
| Publisher: | Penguin Classics an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 208 pages |
| Series: | Penguin Modern Classics |
| Genres: |
Classic crime and mystery fiction Fiction in translation Classic fiction: general and literary |