Roland Buti

Le Milieu de l’horizon

«It was June, 1976. I was thirteen years old and the summer holidays had just begun. It was the year of the drought. Water carriers brought water pumped from the bottom of the lakes to the villages. Under a sky as yellow as cornhusks, soldiers with trucks and motor-pumps were irrigating those crops that could still be saved. The local authorities had activated the Catastrophic Response Plan.»

Swiss Literature Prizes 2014

With a power reminiscent of some of Faulkner’s works, in his novel «Le Milieu de l’horizon» Roland Buti takes us to the small world of a farm in French-speaking Switzerland. Strange and powerful forces are at work under the surface and they are set to destabilise the family life of Gus, a thirteen year-old boy, who terrified and powerless watches a threefold collapse : of traditional agriculture, his parent’s relationship and the innocence of his childhood. All of this takes place in 1967 during the famous drought. Everything goes up in the flames of heat-wave and storm. The old mare Bagatelle finally dies. Passions burn. Everything is consumed in the flames as the author’s sober language reaches a state of incandescence. This is great literature.
(Jury selection of the Swiss Literature Prize, transl. by Andrea Mason Willfratt)

In 1976, Switzerland is experiencing an abnormally hot, dry Summer, with recorded temperatures higher than for many years. The government declares a state of emergency, the army and fire services are deployed across the countryside, where farmers are losing their livestock and crops: everything seems to be falling apart. Even the Sutter family are under threat, in their remote farmhouse in the Canton of Vaud, where events are about to take a dramatic turn. Gus – August, to give him his full name – the narrator of this story, is thirteen years old, and this summer will change many things for him. His father has invested everything he has in a poultry farm, but the heat is rapidly killing off the young chicks. Renovations to the farmhouse have fallen through and his father is slowly retreating into himself. On the other hand, his mother is getting repeated visits from a young woman called Cécile. One day, the two women leave the farmhouse together – as lovers. And Rudy, the mentally handicapped farmhand and pal to Gus, instinctively senses the threat this poses to both the family and the farm. The impressionable Gus is brutally ripped out of his familiar world. Instead of playing with his beloved pigeons, or reading his comics, he now has to look after the animals, which his parents are neglecting. There’s no fodder; Gus has to carry water into the fields, milk the cows – which have been left untended – and he sees an elderly horse die. His pal Rudy is killed when a wooden beam falls on him: Gus is spared nothing. And he not only loses his illusions about life, he also loses his innocence in the arms of a young girl who seduces him. When heavy storms break the heatwave at the end of the summer, the relief is short-lived. This small world, which Roland Buti decribes so wonderfully, is put to the test a second time – by floodwater.

Recommended for translation by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia: www.12swissbooks.ch

Translation of title: The Middle of the Horizon

Éditions Zoé, Genève 2013

ISBN: 978-2-88182-894-2