Notes from the Cévennes

Adam Thorpe's home for the past 25 years has been an old house in the Cévennes, a wild range of mountains in southern France. Prior to this, in an ancient millhouse in the oxbow of a Cévenol river, he wrote the novel that would become the Booker Prize-nominated Ulverton, now a Vintage Classic. In more recent writing Thorpe has explored the Cévennes, drawing on the legends, history and above all the people of this part of France for his inspiration. In his charming journal, Notes from the Cévennes, Thorpe takes up these themes, writing about his surroundings, the village and his house at the heart of it, as well as the contrasts of city life in nearby Nîmes. In particular he is interested in how the past leaves impressions - marks - on our landscape and on us. What do we find in the grass, earth and stone beneath our feet and in the objects around us? How do they tie us to our forebears? What traces have been left behind and what marks do we leave now? He finds a fossil imprinted in the single worked stone of his house's front doorstep, explores the attic once used as a silk factory and contemplates the stamp of a chance paw in a fragment of Roman roof-tile. Elsewhere, he ponders mutilated fleur-de-lys (French royalist symbols) in his study door and unwittingly uses the tomb-rail of two sisters buried in the garden as a gazebo. Then there are the personal fragments that make up a life and a family history: memories dredged up by 'dusty toys, dried-up poster paints, a painted clay lump in the bottom of a box.' Part celebration of both rustic and urban France, part memoir, Thorpe's humorous and precise prose shows a wonderful stylist at work, recalling classics such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes.

Adam Thorpe is a bestselling novelist, non-fiction writer and poet. His recent book On Silbury Hill (2014) was Radio 4's Book of the Week and received wide praise. He has published many novels, including Ulverton (1992), now a Vintage Classic, and numerous collections of poetry. Adam was born in France, brought up in India, Cameroon and England and now lives in southern France, between the Cévennes and Nîmes.

1 Gossamer Threads 2 The Poppet 3 Coming Into Shot 4 Wartime Shrines 5 Our Baker is Missing 6 Reprisal in the Oxbow 7 The Psychological Castle 8 Taking the Postman Hostage 9 Resident Tombs 10 A Flat Above the Cafe 11 All that Rough Muskc 12 Erudition 13 A Local Custom 14 Disaster Area 15 Martins in the Roof 16 A Visit from the City Police 17 Arches and Bulls 18 Defending Wolves 19 A Catastrophe 20 Floodwaters 21 The Ballot 22 Paws, Fingers and Thighs 23 Taking Our Tread 24 Epilogue Footprints Acknowledgements