“ This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. ” ― Rumi
Dirty, drunk, unloved, and unloving, Hector Loursat has been a bitter recluse for eighteen long years—ever since his wife abandoned him and their newborn child to run off with another man. Once a successful lawyer, Loursat now guzzles burgundy and burie
Nineteen-year-old Frank Friedmaier lives in a country under occupation. Most people struggle to get by; Frank takes it easy in his mother's whorehouse, which caters to members of the occupying forces. But Frank is restless. He is a pimp, a thug, a petty t
Paisiblement retirA(c) A Meung-sur-Loire, le commissaire Maigret se laisse convaincre par un tout jeune homme, Jean Maura, de l'accompagner A New York. Maura s'inquiA]te pour son pA]re, un homme d'affaires d'origine franAaise, qui semble en proie A de gra
On the outskirts of Paris, a prostitute is found murdered in a vacant lot. In a seedy apartment house nearby lives pasty, fat Mr. Hire. Mr. Hire, who earns his living through a petty postal scam, is a convicted pornographer, a peeping Tom, and, once a wee
Il avait lâché le journal, qui s’était d’abord déployé sur ses genoux puis qui avait glissé lentement avant d’atterrir sur le parquet ciré. On aurait cru qu’il venait de s’endormir si, de temps en temps, une mince fente ne s’était dess
Léonard Planchon, a tense man with a cleft lip, goes to Maigret with an unusual problem. He wants to kill his wife, or perhaps his wife and her lover, who for two years now have been making him sleep on a cot in the dining room. He has even worked out a
Snared in the propeller of a barge was a man’s arm—drained white, and limp as a dead fish from prolonged immersion in the murky canal. It was a singularly challenging case for Chief Inspector Maigret, as piece by gruesome piece the corpse of a man was
Inspector Maigret, after ruling out the possibility of professional murder and having his spotless reputation called into question, solves the perplexing murder of a nightclub owner who at first glance seems to have no enemies. Translated by Robert Eglesf