Fortune de France

Plot

The series spans the years 1547 to 1661, shadowing the European wars of religion of the 16th and 17th centuries. In the first novel, veteran soldiers Jean de Siorac and Jean de Sauveterre settle into Château Mespech in Périgord, a beautiful but dangerous region of France far from the influence of the king. Staunch royalists but also devoted Huguenots, the men assemble a loyal community around them, but are challenged as religious unrest, poverty and famine threaten their way of life and push the country into chaos.

Siorac's son Pierre narrates the first six novels, and Pierre's own son Pierre-Emmanuel narrates the remaining seven volumes. The men meet many notable people and witness various historical events, including the marriage of Henry, King of Navarre to Margaret of France, the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, and the assassination of Henry III of France.

Novels

The first novel, Fortune de France, was published by Plon in 1977 when Merle was nearly 70, and the last was released in 2003 when he was 95. Merle wrote the first installment as a one-off, but continued the series as "readers clamoured for more". The author died in 2004.

The series was never translated into English until Pushkin Press published the first volume (translated by T. Jefferson Kline) as The Brethren on 11 September 2014, with a US edition released on 3 March 2015. Both English versions of the second novel were published by Pushkin as City of Wisdom and Blood in September 2015. The third novel will be published as Heretic Dawn in the UK on 4 February 2016, and in the US on 7 June 2016.

Kline, a fan of the series, submitted his translation on spec to Pushkin, where editor Daniel Seton was surprised to find that such an "undiscovered gem" had been thus far overlooked in the UK.

Style and historical interpretation

Merle wrote the 500-page novels of his Fortune de France series "using many of the idioms and speech rhythms of that period, some of them taken from the region of Périgord". James Kirkup noted in The Independent:

Merle was a genuine scholar of language, and believed that the atmosphere of an era could not be expressed without many interventions of regional dialects and quaint usages of the times. He admired William Makepeace Thackeray's The History of Henry Esmond, set in the 18th century, whose language he had mastered to perfection.

Merle himself said, "The readers accepted their apprenticeship and were delighted to learn so many good expressions and terms from the Old French of the 16th century."

In 1982's Le Prince que voilà (Behold the Prince), Merle challenged the typical "caricatured" portrayal of Henry III by presenting the king as "a brilliant intellectual [who was] very courageous in his refusal to punish the Protestants".

Pushkin Press editor Daniel Seton suggests that Merle's own experiences in World War II influenced Fortune de France novels, saying "There is quite a clear antiwar stance. While there is plenty of action and swordplay, the protagonist is generally horrified by the descent of his country into civil war and the cruelty shown by both sides, Protestants and Catholics, during the conflict. His main aim is to try to protect himself and those close to him, regardless of religion, from the violence."

Reception

Kirkup called the Fortune de France series "spectacular" and dubbed it Merle's "major achievement". Douglas Johnson of The Guardian described the author as "a master of the historical novel". The series made Merle a household name in France, and he has been repeatedly called the Alexandre Dumas of the 20th century. Le Monde dubbed Merle "France's greatest popular novelist", and Le Figaro observed, "Robert Merle is one of the very few French writers who have attained both popular success and the admiration of critics."

Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Allan Massie praised Merle's "thorough research, depth of understanding and popular touch", noting that "one of the strengths of Merle’s novels in his ability to evoke the feeling and texture of everyday life as well as high politics". Massie compared the first novel in Merle's series to Maurice Druon's The Accursed Kings (Les Rois maudits), another famed French historical novel series, writing "There is a philosophical depth to the novel absent from Druon, for the Brethren are attracted to the Reformed Protestant (or Huguenot) faith ... Though not as gripping as The Accursed Kings, The Brethren never strays, as Druon sometimes does, into the grotesque. It has a credibly human solidity." Toby Clements of The Telegraph wrote, "There are set-piece discussions on the dilemmas of faith that are informative if not the stuff of high drama, and passages on the history of France that can only be made sense of with the aid of a map and a memory for names. But elsewhere there is much colour, and, overall, The Brethren gives a salty and plausible idea of just how different, odd and parlous life might have been."

As of 2014, Fortune de France had sold over five million copies in France.