Ceux de la soif
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Ceux de la soif (1938) is a novel by Georges Simenon based on The Galapagos Affair.
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Summary
Professor Müller has been living on an island in the Galapagos Islands for five years, together with Rita; they have recently been joined by neighbors, the Herrmanns, who have come to treat the illness of their son Jef, who is tuberculosis-positive and epileptic. Every six months, a schooner brought food and some groceries.
Life goes on as usual until the day when the eccentric and unbearable Countess Von Kleber arrives on the island, flanked by two gigolos, Nic and Kraus. She also intends to return to nature, but in a very particular way: she undertakes to build a hotel where she will welcome tourists in need of tranquility and change of scenery; it will be a wooden house, named "Hotel du Retour à la Nature". Her days are spent waiting for her friends' yachts, which will bring her not only provisions, but also the cigarettes and whisky she cannot do without. Things soon turned sour on the island. The Countess is having a wedding with Nic and the visitors. The situation becomes increasingly tense between the occupants; a quarrel breaks out in the dry season over a spring that the newcomers use without regard for their companions.
The young Kraus, who can no longer bear this existence, leaves in a canoe, accompanied by a guide: we will learn later that the boat sank and Kraus drowned. One day, Nic and the Countess disappear: it is assumed that they too preferred to end their lives rather than confess the failure of their attempt. Finally, Professor Müller, exasperated by the turn of events, dies of a stroke, while Rita returns to Germany.
Special aspects of the novel
The turmoil that social life and eroticism throw into the simple, crude existence of a small group of Germans. Professor Müller's conscious failure is a positive experience in that it proves the utopia of the "enchanted islands" where "nature defends itself against the pride of men.
The novel is based on a real story that took place in the early 1930s on Floreana Island in the Galapagos archipelago.
Work description
Space and time setting
Space
A deserted island in the Galapagos named Floréana in the novel.
Time
Contemporary era.
Characters
Main character
Frantz Müller, German. Doctor and university professor in Berlin, author of works on philosophy. Divorced. 50 years old.
Other characters
- Rita Ehrlich, 32 years old, married to a colleague of Müller's whom she left to follow him.
- Herrmann, a preparator at the University of Bonn, his wife and their little boy
- Countess Von Kleber
- Nic Arenson, her principal "husband
- Kraus, a young German, 20 years old, the Countess's handyman.
Adaptations
- 1989 : Ceux de la soif, téléfilm français réalisé par Laurent Heynemann, d'après le roman éponyme de Simenon, avec Bruno Cremer et Mimsy Farmer
See also
