Ramuz Charles Ferdinand – If the sun does not return: In a hamlet of the Swiss Valais, backed by the mountain, the sun is not directly visible, hidden by the ridges, from October to April. That winter, Anzevui, the old healer, a bit of a witch doctor, consults an old book and announces that the sun will be extinguished in the spring. It must be said that signs are there, from the Spanish war to an exceptional weather. The threat of death in the small community will upset the behavior of its members. Some give in to panic, others make reservations and young people make fun of the old man. Only, Isabelle will stand against the fatality.

A deliberately rocky writing and an impressive work on the syntax and the vocabulary to restore the speech of the people of that time. This digital edition, made from the digitization of the Group of free and free ebooks, adapts it and conforms to the revised version by the author of 1941 (Mermod). Adapted to the cinema by Claude Goretta.

Charles Ferdinand Ramuz was born in 1878 in Lausanne, Switzerland, of trading parents. After studying literature in Lausanne, he left for Paris, where he stayed regularly until 1914, while participating in the literary life of the French-speaking world. In 1903 he published Le petit village, a collection of poems. His first novel, Aline (1905), is a success. Then, until 1911, novels centered on a character (including Life of Samuel Belet, Aimé Pache, Waldensian painter, persecuted Jean-Luc). In 1914, he returned to live permanently in Switzerland. He founded Cahiers Vaudois with Edmond Gilliard and Paul Budry. With War in the Highlands (1915), The Reign of the Evil Spirit (1917), The Cure of Illness (1917), he renounced the explanatory novel to describe communities struggling with the forces of evil, the war , the end of the world. He develops a new language closer to spoken language – to the chagrin of purists – abandoning linear narrative and introducing the “on” as the expression of a community.

The post-war years are marked by financial difficulties. In 1924, Ramuz signed a contract at the publisher Grasset. It is between 1926 and 1937 that great novels appear such as The great fear in the mountains (1925-26), The beauty on the earth (1927), Farinet (1932), Derborence (1934), The Savoyard boy (1936) If the sun did not return (1937). The Schiller Grand Prix was awarded in 1936. When his friend and publisher Lausanne-Henry Mermod proposed the publication of his complete works in 1940-41, Ramuz reads and corrects all his texts. He died in 1947 in Pully near Lausanne.