Celebrating the Launch of Jean Giono’s The Serpent of Stars and the publication of Jean Follain’s Earthly

Join Archipelago Books and The Song Cave in celebrating the reprint of Jean Giono’s The Serpent of Stars and the publication of Jean Follain’s Earthly. Both Giono and Follain were writers from rural France who came of age during WWI. As the agrarian lifestyle they were raised in was forever altered by the twin forces of WWII and industrialization, they used writing to engage with these century-defining dynamics. Follain refers to the “uncertainty at the root of time” and observes plainly in one of his poems: “There are almost no more horses.” Giono renders the disorientation of the times with a paradox: “When mysteries are very crafty, they hide in the light; shadows are merely a decoy.” The event will feature readings from the two books by Andrew Seguin and Mark Polizzotti, as well as a conversation between Edwin Frank and Michael Wood.