ABOUT
THE BOOK

Of Illustrious Men is about the author’s father, Joseph, a travelling salesman who died at forty-one, leaving a family in shock behind him. In the mind of his grieving eleven-year-old son, too young to have really known him, his dead father’s exploits in the Resistance were the stuff of daydreams. His father was more than a quiet family man; he was a hero, a warrior, a legend. But the narrator is no longer a child, but a mature writer, and though he still aches for the loss of his father, he also knows that Joseph’s heroism can be found not only in the days of wartime glory, but also in the days of domestic peace. Jean Rouaud won the prestigious Goncourt Prize for his first novel, Fields of Glory. He lives in Montpellier with his family.