The Child and the River

A new translation of an evocative, Huckleberry Finn–esque French bestseller about a young farmboy, the river where he is forbidden to play, and the adventures that ensue when he disobeys his family’s wishes.

The story of Henri Bosco’s The Child and the River is straightforward yet haunting: Pascalet, a boy growing up on a farm in France, is told he can play anywhere he likes—except by the river. Of course he dreams of going to the river, and one day he does.
 
He falls asleep in a small boat tied to an old dock, then wakes up to find himself drifting . . . Onto an island where some gypsies are camping. There, he sees another young boy, perhaps also a gypsy, tied up and beaten. Stealthily, he frees him, and the two escape in a boat, then spend an idyllic—beautifully described—week living freely on the river.
 
Eventually, Gatzo, the other child, is somewhat magically reunited with his family. Pascalet returns home, desperately missing his friend and the wild life they shared . . . Some time later, Gatzo, orphaned, appears at Pascalet’s doorstep: the two “brothers,” one light-skinned, the other darker, are reunited. (And that’s material for another story, as the narrator, the grown-up Pascalet, tells us.)
 
A sort of French Huckleberry Finn, The Child and the River is also considered a “crossover” book, appealing as much to adults as to children. It has sold more than three million copies in France.

Henri Bosco (1888–1976) was a French writer who was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times. His family was of Provencal, Ligurian, and Piedmontese origin, and much of his work focused on Provencal life. His novel Malicroix was published by NYRB Classics in 2020.

Joyce Zonana is a writer and translator. She is the author of a memoir, Dream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina, an Exile’s Journey, and her writing has been published in The Hudson Review, Signs, and Meridians, among other publications. She translated Henri Bosco’s novel Malicroix for NYRB Classics.