Mr Hire's Engagement, La couverture du livre peut varier (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1903. He is best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret novels and his prolific output of over 400 novels and short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.

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PENGUIN CLASSICS

I love reading Simenon. He makes me think of Chekhov

William Faulkner

A truly wonderful writer marvellously readable lucid, simple, absolutely in tune with the world he creates

Muriel Spark

Few writers have ever conveyed with such a sure touch, the bleakness of human life

A. N. Wilson

One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories

Guardian

A novelist who entered his fictional world as if he were part of it

Peter Ackroyd

The greatest of all, the most genuine novelist we have had in literature

André Gide

Superb The most addictive of writers A unique teller of tales

Observer

The mysteries of the human personality are revealed in all their disconcerting complexity

Anita Brookner

A writer who, more than any other crime novelist, combined a high literary reputation with popular appeal

P. D. James

A supreme writer Unforgettable vividness

Independent

Compelling, remorseless, brilliant

John Gray

Extraordinary masterpieces of the twentieth century

John Banville

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Georges Simenon was born on 12 February 1903 in Liège, Belgium, and died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.

Completed in 1933, Mr Hire s Engagement is one of Simenon s early novels. It recreates a scene that the author witnessed as a young reporter in Liège, a scene which continued to haunt him for years afterwards: that of an angry mob, and a man chased on to a roof, clinging to the cornice to keep from falling to his death.

Georges Simenon

MR HIRE S ENGAGEMENT

1

The concierge cleared her throat before knocking, fixed her eyes on the Belle-Jardinière catalogue in her hand, and announced, A letter for you, Mr Hire.

She pulled her shawl tight across her chest. Somebody moved behind the brown door: first on the left, then on the right; first footsteps, then a muted rumpling of fabric and the clanking of pots; the concierge s grey eyes seemed to penetrate the wood in pursuit of the invisible noise. At last it drew near. The key turned. A rectangle of light appeared, a carpet of yellow flowers, the marble of a washstand. A man held out his hand, but the concierge didn t see it, or not clearly in any case, she wasn t paying attention. Her ferreting eyes had settled on another object: a towel soaked in blood, glaring deep red against the cold marble.

The door swung closed gently, of its own accord. The key turned again, and the concierge walked down the four flights of stairs, pausing now and then to think. She was thin; her clothes hung from her like a scarecrow s rags from its skeleton of sticks. Her nose was damp, her eyelids red, her hands chapped from the cold.

On the other side of the gla