8 /10 1 Votes
Language English, French Published in English 1957 Originally published 1956 Genre Crime Fiction Country Belgium | 4/5 Goodreads Publication date 1956 Preceded by The Rules of the Game Publisher Presses de la Cité | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback) Pages 159 pp (in 1957 Hamish Hamilton edition) Original title Le Petit Homme d'Arkhangelsk Similar The Man Who Watched t, La chambre bleue, Maigret's boyhood friend, Maigret and the Ghost, Maigret and the Mad Wo | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Little Man from Archangel, (original title Le Petit Homme d'Arkhangelsk), first published in English by Hamish Hamilton in 1957, is a novel by Georges Simenon.
Contents
Plot summary
Set in a small market town in France, this is a bleak story of prejudice, isolation and loneliness. Jonas Milk is a Russian Jew who runs a second-hand book shop and leads a quiet unassuming life. Married to a promiscuous younger French woman, he wakes one day to find she has disappeared. Assuming she has run off with another man for a few days, as she has done before, Jonas tells his neighbours and his wife’s family that she has gone to visit a friend. When the wife fails to return as expected people begin to suspect him of murdering her. Rather than admit his wife’s previous infidelities, the little man maintains his lie in the face of increasing hostility and isolation until he is driven to despair.
Adaptations
The story has been adapted for the BBC radio drama series BBC Radio 4 - Afternoon Drama, first aired on August 3, 2011, starring Steven McNicoll and Francesca Dymond.