An international bestseller and winner of the Prix Goncourt, The Erl-King is a magisterial tale of innocence, perversion and obsession. It follows the passage of strange, gentle Abel Tiffauges from submissive schoolboy to adult misfit - a man without a sense of belonging until he finds himself a prisoner of war, and then a teacher, and then the 'ogre' of a Nazi school at the castle of Kaltenborn. Taking us more deeply into the dark heart of fascism than any novel since The Tin Drum, Tournier's masterpiece rivets us until the very last page, when Abel meets his mystic fate in the collapsing ruins of the Third Reich; it is a novel that shocks us, dazzles us, and above all holds us spellbound.



Michel Tournier is one of France's greatest living writers, winner of the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française in 1967 for Friday and the Prix Goncourt for The Erl-King in 1970. A member of the Académie Goncourt, Michel Tournier currently lives in Choisel.



No summary can suggest the rich texture, the dazzling profundity and creative vitality of this novel; the strangest and most haunting to come out of the fratricidal war



Must be one of the best novels published anywhere since the war



The Erl-King is the work of a brilliant and mature writer