SIMENON SIMENON "REPORT". READING GROUP: WICH GEORGES SIMENON BOOK SHOULD WE READ IN FEBRUARY?

The Guardian - 28/01/2020 - Sam Jordison - Last month, Penguin republished Maigret and Monsieur Charles, the last Maigret written by Georges Simenon in a new translation by Ros Schwartz. It marks the end of what author John Banville called “a positively heroic publishing venture”. Over the past six years, Penguin has brought out all 75 of the Maigret books that Simenon wrote, producing a new translation every six months, which is, as Banville says, a fitting monument to one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. It feels like a good reason to investigate Simenon here on the Reading Group. We can discover why André Gide called him “perhaps the greatest and the most truly a novelist in contemporary French letters”. Why Camus said he learned from him. Why Muriel Spark and Henry Miller adored him. Why William Faulkner compared him to Chekhov. Why the famous Belgian remains one of the most widely read French-language writers of the 20th century...>>>