If your bookseller doesn’t have it hidden in his closet, ask him without further delay. John ShermanThe Irish poet’s only novel William Butler Yeats, published in 1891. One hundred and thirty-one years later, Jean-Yves Masson gave us the first French translation, and we thank him for it. It is a young novel of about 130 pages, enough to realize that a remarkable poet of vision can become a great novelist of “psyche”. His writing is annoyingly crisp.

We’re in Ireland, in December, in the small, foggy provincial town of Balla, where nothing really happens, but anything can happen. John Sherman is a young man without a position or a job. His desire? “I want to marry a bag crown”, He thinks strangely, meditating on the flies on the ceiling. Fishing, casting lines, gardening, looking for insects, meeting a girl called Mary Carton at the presbytery in the afternoon…