The Franciscan Sisters Remember: The Fiction of Georges Simenon by Olivier Macaux

A legend has grown up around Georges Simenon’s work: translated into fifty-five languages, with some five hundred and fifty million copies sold, and widely adapted for film and television, this body of work—comprising more than four hundred titles—defies the traditional conventions of the literary establishment.

This popular novelist, known for the speed and conciseness of his writing, has broken into the realm of great literature. André Gide, however, acknowledged that ‘Simenon is perhaps the greatest and the true novelist we have had in French literature today’.

Georges Simenon enjoyed unwavering success with the Maigret series and his ‘hard-boiled’ novels, also known as ‘novels of destiny’ (including masterpieces such as *Letter to My Judge*, *The Snow Was Dirty* or *The Rings of Bicêtre*), and it was as a consummate master of narrative techniques that he offered his readers a fictional world of great authenticity, tirelessly exploring the torments of the human condition.