The Son of Man

After several years of absence, a man reappears in the life of his wife and their young son and takes them to the dilapidated house in the mountains where he grew up with his ruthless father. There, the son discovers a nature unknown to him, wild and bewitching. As the father’s hold over mother and child grows and he dictates the mysterious laws of their new existence, the return to their previous life and home seems increasingly impossible. Haunted by his past and consumed with jealousy, the man slowly sinks into madness and his son has no choice but to challenge his father in an attempt to save something of their humanity. Brilliantly translated by Frank Wynne, The Son of Man is an exceptional novel on the transmission of violence from one generation to the next, and the second of Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s novels to appear in English following Animalia, ‘an extraordinary book’ (Sunday Times).