The Glory of the Pythres

Set in the villages and valleys of France's mountainous provinces, The Glory of the Pythres follows the fortunes--or rather, the colossal misfortunes--of the Pythres (pronounced as pitres, the French word for clowns or buffoons). Of peasant stock, "suspicious, taciturn, mulish, stubborn," the Pythres live a grim existence, locked up with their dead through long winters and passing on their problems like heirlooms to their children. They, like their neighbors, are Others, their culture passing away, their language barely comprehensible to other Frenchmen, their lives defined by tribal hatreds with motives that have long since vanished into history.