The tyrant

"Set in the late 1960s of student unrest and political turmoil, this haunting work portrays, in exquisitely psychological detail, the emotional crisis in the life of Jean Calmet, a young Swiss schoolteacher. As we watch his father's cremation in the opening chapter, we sense that, even though his father's body as been reduced to ashes, his spirit survives to haunt Jean. His father's prodigious vitality and virility had crushed his family and ruined his son's childhood. Even after his father's death, Jean cannot be free. The parental ogre's actions continue to suck Jean into a vortex of despair"--Page 4 of cover.