Tartarin De Tarascon
1872
The great French comic novel that gave the language a word for swaggering bullshit. Tartarin of Tarascon is a prosperous bourgeois who has never left his sleepy Provençal town but has convinced everyone, including himself, that he is a fearsome hunter of lions and tigers. His home overflows with weapons he's never fired, exotic specimens he's never encountered, and wild tales spun from pure imagination. When he finally embarks for Algeria to hunt lions, the adventure becomes a glorious disaster, a farcical reckoning between his inflated mythology and actual experience. Daudet's satirical portrait of provincial life and its romantic delusions has resonated since 1872; the character became so perfectly iconic that 'tartarin' entered the French lexicon for a boastful braggart. For readers who appreciate witty social comedy in the tradition of Molière.
