Malevil

Topic

The qualification of science fiction can be regarded as reducing, relating to this novel, since only the starting situation (destruction of human civilization by an explosion of unknown origin) joined the Post-apocalyptic topic , then very popular in Science-fiction. All the remainder of the novel tells how a group of miraculés survivors takes up the challenge of the rebuilding of an human society.

This remark can apply to several novels of Robert Merle who knew to freely integrate the science fiction in his work without making of it the single source of his literary production. One thus often attaches such novels to the kind of the speculative fiction , or science fiction novel .

Many topics are approached in this novel: the religion, the policy, the place of the women in the company, the rural world, the role of the chief, certainly under the angle of a mini-community but who return to our company.

Summary

Following a nuclear war, which according to any probability devastated the whole Earth, Emmanuel Count and its six companions (Menou, Momo, Peyssou, Meysonnier, Colin and Thomas) make castle of Malevil, of which the deep cellar their allowed to survive, the home base of their efforts of rebuilding of the civilization, which will also pass by the confrontation with other groups of survivors, that they are bands wandering or of the wandering or sedentary structured groups.

The narration is mainly the work of the hero principal, Emmanuel Count, but also made appear the notes of Thomas which either supplement, or give another vision of scenes told previously by Emmanuel. This process makes the novel very realistic.

Film adaptation

The novel was the object in 1981 of a film adaptation of Christian de Chalonge with Michel Serrault, Jacques Dutronc, Jacques Villeret and Jean-Louis Trintignant. She was repudiated by the author. See Malevil .

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