ABSTRACT
One extraordinary event recurs in nearly all of Claude Simon’s seventeen books: his own escape from certain death when, as a cavalryman defending French borders—at the outbreak of the Second World War—he was forced to participate in an attack launched, into Belgium, against German tanks. Miraculously surviving the slaughter, the future novelist (born in 1913) later found himself in the company of three other survivors: two officers and one fellow cavalryman.
