In his only novel, the celebrated dramatist has chosen as his main character a man who is both utterly banal yet strangely touched with grace, a lowly clerk who is none-the-less prey to luminous visions. At 35 he quits the "rat-race" thanks to an unexpected inheritance and devotes himself to his secret passion: observing and meditating on the human condition. "It may well be" wrote the French critic François Nourissier in Le Point, "that in a few years we will come to realize that The Hermit is one of the essential works of our time, probing and detailing the illness of our century.
In his only novel, the celebrated dramatist has chosen as his main character a man who is both utterly banal yet strangely touched with grace, a lowly clerk who is none-the-less prey to luminous visions. At 35 he quits the "rat-race" thanks to an unexpected inheritance and devotes himself to his secret passion: observing and meditating on the human condition. "It may well be" wrote the French critic François Nourissier in Le Point, "that in a few years we will come to realize that The Hermit is one of the essential works of our time, probing and detailing the illness of our century.