Lilac & Flag [Paperback]

John Berger (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 18, 1999

In the mythic city of Troy, amidst the shanty-towns, factories, opulent hotels, fading heritages and steadfast dreams, the children and grandchildren of rural peasants pursue meagre livings as best they can. And two young lovers embark upon a passionate journey of love and survival.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A magnificent trilogy. [Into Their Labours] is moving in an almost unbearable way."

-- Anthony Burgess

As Dickens and Balzac did for their time, so, John Berger does for ours, rendering the movement of a people and the passing of a way of life in his masterwork, the Into Their Labours trilogy. With Lilac and Flag, the Alpine village of the two earlier volumes has been forsaken for the mythic city of Troy. Here, amidst the shantytowns, factories, and opulent hotels, fading heritages and steadfast dreams, the children and grandchildren of rural peasants pursue meager livings as best they can. And here, two young lovers embark upon a passionate, desperate journey of love and survival and find transcending hope both for themselves and for us as their witnesses.

"Remarkable.... Like all great novelists, all great people, [John Berger] guides his characters and his readers tenderly and with intimate humor. There is the voice of Isaiah and Jeremiah in this book, but also the compassion of a New Testament."

-- Michael Ondaatje --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

A magnificent trilogy. [Into Their Labours] is moving in an almost unbearable way."

-- Anthony Burgess

As Dickens and Balzac did for their time, so, John Berger does for ours, rendering the movement of a people and the passing of a way of life in his masterwork, the Into Their Labours trilogy. With Lilac and Flag, the Alpine village of the two earlier volumes has been forsaken for the mythic city of Troy. Here, amidst the shantytowns, factories, and opulent hotels, fading heritages and steadfast dreams, the children and grandchildren of rural peasants pursue meager livings as best they can. And here, two young lovers embark upon a passionate, desperate journey of love and survival and find transcending hope both for themselves and for us as their witnesses.

"Remarkable.... Like all great novelists, all great people, [John Berger] guides his characters and his readers tenderly and with intimate humor. There is the voice of Isaiah and Jeremiah in this book, but also the compassion of a New Testament."

-- Michael Ondaatje --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 171 pages
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks (November 18, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0747545219
• ISBN-13: 978-0747545217
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,324,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John Berger was born in London in 1926. He is well known for his novels and stories as well as for his works of nonfiction, including several volumes of art criticism. His first novel, A Painter of Our Time, was published in 1958, and since then his books have included the novel G., which won the Booker Prize in 1972. In 1962 he left Britain permanently, and he lives in a small village in the French Alps.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Superlative Ending To The Triptych, April 30, 2001

By 

taking a rest - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Lilac and Flag (Paperback)

The, "Into Their Labours" trilogy is among the most extraordinary work I have ever read. "Pig Earth" and "Once In Europa", which lead to Mr. Berger's finale of, "Lilac And Flag" were both brilliant, however the concluding volume is a work you will never forget. Every aspect of this final work is on a grand scale, the writer will lift your spirits and then pummel you with the physical and mental burden of a Requiem Mass. He celebrates, he condemns and redeems with equal intensity, and when the work finally ends you will have a new reference point for whatever reading will follow.

The first 2 installments take place in an Alpine Village that, per the Author, could be easily found many times in the same Alps that he describes. It is even suggested the locale is not unlike the Village that the writer calls his home. In this, the final work, he creates a fictional city, one that he controls, one that will not allow any familiarity to distract from his final act of recording the death of the way of life that starts as nearly idyllic, and ends with a form of redemptive enigma, but only after he has destroyed all that existed in the first two books. The decay and darkness are suffocating, the tale that he ends is infinitely displaced from its origins and is only brought back into contact with its predecessors by his final words, which explain everything, and confirm nothing.

I have never been one for creating lists in an attempt to enumerate the best of what I have had the privilege to read. This trilogy has changed that, for taken as one work it would likely occupy the premier spot, and if taken separately would all reside in the top 5. These writings are the result of 15 years of work and there is no way to categorize it in anything less than superlatives.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars About the love and its power in this end of millennium ., December 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Lilac and Flag (Paperback)

From a european reader's point of view, this is one of the most interesting desciptions about the size of love in this end of century. Both main characters represents the dificulty of being a lover in the middle of this times of cholera. Lilac and flag are simple workers. They don't know much about books, poetry or culture but they know what means fall in love, what represents to love another human being in its city, which represents all the big european cities. As the author does in "To the weding", "Lilac and Flag" represents simply the love amd its power in this sad days of poverty, destruction and explotiation of weak people. Thanks for your work John and your way to understand the existence. We'll continue reading you.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fiction as Social History, January 22, 2002

By 

R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lilac and Flag (Paperback)

This book is part of trilogy - Pig Earth, In Europa, Lilac and Flag - depicting the erosion of traditional peasant culture and the incorporation of the children of the peasantry into modern urban life. Taken together, these books comprise a kind of fictionalized sociology of modernization. Each of these books describes a different aspect of this process. The first book, Pig Earth, describes the traditional life of poor French peasants from the Savoy region. Pig Earth is a series of stories and poems showing the seasonal routine of labor, the close relationship of other aspects of peasant life to seasonal labors, and relatively closed nature of these communities. The latter is shown to have both positive and negative aspects, a combination of social solidarity and insularity. The second book, In Europa, is a series of stories showing the penetration of modern industrial civilization into the life of the peasantry and recounts some of the costs, and benefits, of this process. The last book, Lilac and Flag, is set in a mythical city, called Troy, which has aspects of many modern cities. Lilac and Flag describes the life of a young couple, the descendents of poor peasants, who now live a marginal existence in the metropolis of Troy. Overall, this is a successful set of books. Berger is a very talented writer and this set of books gives a vivid sense of the important transition from peasant life on the land to modern industrial civilization. Berger's attempt to depict this important social process is really admirable. The books do vary somewhat in quality. In Europa is probably the best, containing a number of powerful stories, with Pig Earth coming a close second. Lilac and Flag is probably the least effective. The style, presumably a correlate of the urban setting, is distinctly different and the plot has surreal elements. I suspect that Lilac and Flag will strike many readers as relatively familiar and conventional where the contents of Pig Earth and In Europa are relatively novel. If I were to read just one of these books, I would pick In Europa.

It is important to realize that Berger is describing the tail of a process with roots in the Renaissance and that accelerated tremendously in the 19th century. The traditional life described in Pig Earth is actually a life that has been greatly affected by industrial civilization. Many men in the community described by Berger participate in seasonal labor in large cities, there is compulsory primary education, and the local church has a strong influence. Other aspects of the modern world intrude themselves. These include military service, railroads and it is likely that farm products are produced for an international market. In the early or even mid-19th century, a community like this would have been completely geographically isolated, illiterate, and probably would speak a language distinct from French. There are some other fine books devoted to this topic. Eugen Weber's excellent Peasants into Frenchman is a very interesting and readable social history of the impact of the modern world on the French peasantry. A detailed view of French peasant life can be found in Pierre Helias The Horse of Pride, a combined ethnography and memoir about a Breton peasant community written by a scholar who was the son of Breton peasants.