Pedigree

Praise

“Pedigree is a very beautiful book, filled with humanism and tenderness, a gruff tone and sharp-edged words. A real discovery.” —La Tribune (Paris)

“Simenon was born in 1903 in Liège, Belgium. He tells the story of his childhood—his petit-bourgeois upbringing, his scheming mother, the early death of his gentle and unambitious father, the ravages of the war—in Pedigree, the barely fictionalized memoir that is his masterpiece and quite possibly the greatest single work of Belgian literature.” —Luc Sante, New York

“Simenon brings to life in Pedigree the whole sensory world of his childhood in Liège. His words capture the sounds, sights, tastes, smells, and textures of the city…Writing in prose that is pictorial and tactile, Simenon in Pedigree does for Liège what the young Joyce did for Dublin: he evokes the city with such immediacy that we feel we’ve walked in its streets.” —Lucille Frackman Becker, Georges Simenon

“Simenon is not only a master of suspense, he knows also how to probe so deeply into the minds of his characters as to reveal with remarkable fidelity the more evasive of human motives.”—Cleveland Press