Human Nature

Winner of the 2020 Prix Femina, Human Nature charts the transformation of the French countryside through the story of one family against a backdrop of the 1976 drought and the storms of 1999.

For the first time, he found himself alone at the farm, with no sound whatever from the livestock, nor from anyone else, not the least sign of life. And yet, within these walls, life had always won through.

‘An outstanding, big, compassionate novel.' — Le Figaro

1999. As France prepares to see in a new millennium, the country is battered by apocalyptic storms. But holed up on the farm where he and his three sisters grew up, Alexandre seems less afraid of the weather than of the police turning up. Alone in the darkness, he reflects on the end of a rural way of life he once thought could never change. And his thoughts return to the baking hot summer of 1976, when he met Constanze, an environmental activist who fell for the beauty of the countryside, and was prepared to use any means to save it.

Serge Joncour’s impassioned, ambitious novel charts three decades of political, social, and environmental upheaval through the lives of a French farming family, as the delicate bond between the human and natural worlds threatens to snap.