An Excerpt from the Novel "La Maison du Joueur de Flûte" by Alexander Vialatte

Abstract

In La Maison du Joueur de Flûte (1986, posthumously) a nostalgic narrator returns to his roots, and his childhood house in a village. The house keeps changing, as do the inhabitants over time. Many of them are children. The fantastic takes over. The owner or narrator, also a photographer, captures them in photographs, but somehow the shutter stops working and the shots are superimposed meanwhile all the household characters remain elusive. The narrator claims to be the ‘musical consciousness’ of the entire household. Musical references abound in the house, which haunts its inhabitants.