The Big Flea Market

9 hrs. 10 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Gary Romain

Narrator Natalya Kaznacheeva

Description

A military pilot and hero of World War II, Garry wrote “The Big Stash” soon after the liberation of France from the occupiers. Fifteen-year-old Luc Marten, the son of a Resistance fighter who was killed, finds himself alone in post-war Paris amid chaos, corruption, the flourishing black market, and brutal reprisals against those suspected of collaborating with the Germans. A strange, ever-anxious old man takes the boy under his care — he has already adopted several homeless teenagers. In this new family, Luc will face unexpected discoveries, first love, and a “grown-up” life he builds in the image of the gangsters from American action films.

“The Big Stash” is one of the earliest mature novels by the most widely read French classic of the 20th century. Romain Gary (his real surname is Kazets) published throughout his life under pseudonyms and even received the famous Goncourt Prize twice under different names: in 1956 as Gary, and in 1975 as the aspiring writer Émile Ajar. However, the prize he awarded to Ajar, he declined to accept.