Long regarded as one of France's most distinguished writers, Jean Giono (1895-1970) produced one of his finest novels in TO THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE. The book describes the effect of the First World War on a small community in Provence in chilling detail. In some of the most fiercely realistic and horrifying scenes of war ever recreated in literature, Giono evokes the harsh, primitive conditions in the trenches, as well as the loneliness and anxiety experienced by those left at home. The gradual disintegration of normal life and morals in areas far from the fighting grimly parallels the wholesale destruction of men, land and animals at the front.