About the Book

The boy does not speak. The boy has no name. The boy, raised half-wild in the forests of southern France, sets out alone into the wilderness and the greater world beyond. Without experience of another person aside from his mother, the boy must learn what it is to be human, to exist among people, and to live beyond simple survival.

As this wild and naive child attempts to join civilization, he encounters earthquakes and car crashes, ogres and artists, and, eventually, all-encompassing love and an inescapable war. His adventures take him around the world and through history on a mesmerizing journey, rich with unforgettable characters. A hamlet of farmers fears he’s a werewolf, but eventually raise him as one of their own. A circus performer who toured the world as a sideshow introduces the boy to showmanship and sanitation. And a chance encounter with an older woman exposes him to music and the sensuous pleasures of life. The boy becomes a guide whose innocence exposes society’s wonder, brutality, absurdity, and magic.

Beginning in 1908 and spanning three decades, The Boy is as an emotionally and historically rich exploration of family, passion, and war from one of France’s most acclaimed and bestselling authors.

PRAISE FOR THE BOY

“The book you’re about to read shines a fierce and necessary light on our world.  Read it patiently, if you can—a challenge at times, considering the wild and unexpected turns it takes, and the pleasures that lie around every corner—and discover, or re-discover, what it means to be a member of the human tribe.”

—Julie Orringer, author of The Invisible Bridge and The Flight Portfolio, from the Preface

“With its stunning array of characters and meditations on the meaning of life’s travails, the boy’s story poignantly raises the question of what, exactly, it means to be civilized.”

—Bridget Thoreson, Booklist

“This book is a grand epic, a magnificent story that resurrects the myth of the wild child that discovers civilization. It’s a great novel of learning, an allegory of the savaging of men by war.”

—Mona Ozouf, President of the Femina Prize

“Malte delivers the boy's story viscerally, moment by moment, in rich, elegantly descriptive language, at the same time effectively showing us the larger picture. The boy is all of us, an innocent thrown into the world. VERDICT Highly recommended.”

—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

“Marcus Malte’s dark and intriguing novel The Boy, which won the Prix Femina in 2016 in his native France. Known and celebrated as a crime novelist, Malte plants his plot in familiar literary ground: the bloody Grande Guerre, as the French name World War One…. The Boy remains a mirror, absorbing the projections of others, puzzling the people around him, including the reader. And this perhaps is where Malte is at his best in this novel. What starts as Rousseau’s tale of the “Bon sauvage” (Noble savage), and seems to evolve into a traditional Bildungsroman, bifurcates into bitter and dark irony. The Boy has observed and absorbed society, yet in the end nature will claim him back. The company of humans is not the best choice to make, after all.”

—Filip Noubel, Asymptote

“Tom and I also co-translated a book coming out this month (March) with Restless Books called The Boy by Marcus Malte. Shameless plug alert. It’s a stunningly beautiful book on the sentence level and utterly unique on the plot level and we can’t wait to have something we both worked so hard on at the store.”

—Emma Ramadan, Book Marks

“Malte’s outwardly simple tale of romance and war ends up being a profound meditation on wisdom.”

—Publishers Weekly