The Erl-King

The Erl-King is one of the greatest novels to have been conceived in the crucible of the Second World War. Quite simply, it is 'the most important book to come out of France since Proust' (New Yorker)

An international bestseller and winner of the Prix Goncourt, The Erl-King is a magisterial tale of innocence, perversion and obsession. It follows the passage of strange, gentle Abel Tiffauges from submissive schoolboy to adult misfit - a man without a sense of belonging until he finds himself a prisoner of war, and then a teacher, and then the 'ogre' of a Nazi school at the castle of Kaltenborn. Taking us more deeply into the dark heart of fascism than any novel since The Tin Drum, Tournier's masterpiece rivets us until the very last page, when Abel meets his mystic fate in the collapsing ruins of the Third Reich; it is a novel that shocks us, dazzles us, and above all holds us spellbound.