The Little Man from Archangel
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Author | Georges Simenon |
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Original title | Le Petit Homme d'Arkhangelsk |
Language | English, French |
Genre | Crime fiction |
Publisher | Presses de la Cité |
Publication date | 1956 |
Publication place | Belgium |
Published in English | 1957 |
Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
Pages | 159 pp (in 1957 Hamish Hamilton edition) |
Preceded by | The Rules of the Game |
Followed by | Maigret Has Scruples |
The Little Man from Archangel, (original title Le Petit Homme d'Arkhangelsk), first published in English by Hamish Hamilton in 1957,[1] is a novel by Georges Simenon.
It tells the story of Jonas Milk, a man whose Russian-Jewish parents, refugees from Archangel, brought him up in a little French town where he owns a bookshop. One day his promiscuous wife disappears, not for the first time, but this time she has taken his valuable stamp collection. As she fails to reappear, and first his neighbours and then the police become suspicious, his grip on his own life weakens.
Plot summary
Left in an unnamed town in Berry by his Jewish parents, who returned to Soviet Russia and oblivion, the timid Jonas Milk lives quietly above his second-hand bookshop and also deals in rare stamps. He feels at home amongst the other small businesses in the town, until he marries his maid, a much younger woman with a bad reputation and converts to Catholicism. She is neither a good housekeeper nor a faithful wife, and causes Milk considerable embarrassment and shame. Though she disappears with other men from time to time, she always returns soon after to Milk.
However, one day when she has not come home and Milk, to spare himself yet more embarrassment, lies over her whereabouts. As the days pass, his lies are believed by fewer and fewer neighbours, who begin to shun him, and somebody informs the police. His anguish is increased by the fact that his most valuable stamps, which only she knew about, are gone from his safe.
The police first call round for an allegedly informal chat and then call him in to the station for a formal interrogation, followed by an exhaustive search of his premises. They are suspicious because he has not reported a missing person and, like the rest of the town, wonder if her body is in the canal as an end to her overt infidelities.
Milk's worries are initially eased when a hotel chambermaid tells him that his wife has gone off with a salesman whose room she shared whenever he visited the town. Innocent all along of any crime, he first thinks of going round to the police station but, no longer able to face the hostility of the community and the pressure of the police, instead hangs himself.
Adaptations
The story has been adapted for the BBC radio drama series BBC Radio 4 - Afternoon Drama,[2] first broadcast on 3 August 2011, starring Steven McNicoll and Francesca Dymond.
References
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novels
- The Strange Case of Peter the Lett (1931)
- The Crime at Lock 14 (1931)
- The Death of Monsieur Gallet (1931)
- The Crime of Inspector Maigret (1931)
- A Battle of Nerves (1931)
- Maigret and the Yellow Dog (1931)
- Maigret at the Crossroads (1931)
- The Sailors' Rendezvous (1931)
- Maigret at the Gai-Moulin (1931)
- Guinguette by the Seine (1931)
- The Shadow in the Courtyard (1932)
- Maigret Goes Home (1932)
- The Flemish Shop (1932)
- Death of a Harbour Master (1932)
- The Madman of Bergerac (1932)
- Maigret in Exile (1940)
- Maigret and the Hotel Majestic (1942)
- Maigret and the Spinster (1942)
- To Any Lengths (1944)
- Maigret and the Toy Village (1944)
- Maigret in Retirement (1947)
- Maigret in New York (1947)
- A Summer Holiday (1948)
- Maigret's Dead Man (1948)
- Maigret's First Case (1948)
- My Friend Maigret (1949)
- Maigret and the Coroner (1949)
- Maigret and the Old Lady (1950)
- Madame Maigret's Own Case (1950)
- Maigret's Memoirs (1950)
- Inspector Maigret and the Strangled Stripper (1950)
- Maigret and the Burglar's Wife (1951)
- Maigret, Lognon and the Gangsters (1951)
- Maigret's Revolver (1952)
- Maigret and the Man on the Boulevard (1953)
- Maigret's Mistake (1953)
- Maigret Goes to School (1954)
- Maigret and the Headless Corpse (1955)
- Maigret Sets a Trap (1955)
- Maigret's Failure (1956)
- Maigret Has Scruples (1958)
- Maigret and the Lazy Burglar (1961)
- Maigret and the Saturday Caller (1962)
- Maigret and the Dosser (1963)
- Maigret on the Defensive (1964)
- The Patience of Maigret (1965)
- Maigret Hesitates (1968)
- Maigret and the Killer (1969)
- Maigret and the Mad Woman (1970)
- Maigret and the Loner (1971)
- Maigret and Monsieur Charles (1972)
- Les Fiançailles de M. Hire (1933)
- The Night Club (1933)
- Tropic Moon (1933)
- Chit of a Girl (1938)
- The Man Who Watched the Trains Go By (1938)
- Le Bourgmestre de Furnes (1939)
- The Strangers in the House (1940)
- Strange Inheritance (1941)
- La Veuve Couderc (1942)
- Young Cardinaud (1942)
- Act of Passion (1946)
- The Mahé Circle (1946)
- The Couple from Poitiers (1946)
- Pedigree (1948)
- The Bottom of the Bottle (1949)
- Belle (1952)
- Red Lights (1953)
- The Watchmaker of Everton (1954)
- The Little Man from Archangel (1956)
- The Cat (1967)
- The Man on the Bench in the Barn (1968)
- The Prison (1968)
- The Disappearance of Odile (1971)
- The Glass Cage (1971)
- The Man Who Wasn't Maigret (1992 biography)
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