Tartarin de Tarascon

Tartarin of Tarascon (French: Tartarin de Tarascon) is an 1872 novel written by the French author Alphonse Daudet. It tells the burlesque adventures of Tartarin, a local hero of Tarascon, a small town in southern France, whose invented adventures and reputation as a swashbuckler finally force him to travel to a very prosaic Algiers in search of lions. Instead of finding a romantic, mysterious Oriental fantasy land, he finds a sordid world suspend... more

Tartarin of Tarascon (French: Tartarin de Tarascon) is an 1872 novel written by the French author Alphonse Daudet. It tells the burlesque adventures of Tartarin, a local hero of Tarascon, a small town in southern France, whose invented adventures and reputation as a swashbuckler finally force him to travel to a very prosaic Algiers in search of lions. Instead of finding a romantic, mysterious Oriental fantasy land, he finds a sordid world suspended between Europe and the Middle East. And worst of all, there are no lions left. The book was followed by two sequels: Tartarin sur les Alpes (1885) and Port-Tarascon (1890). Since 1985, a small museum in the town of Tarascon-sur-Rhône is dedicated to the fictional character Tartarin. A festival is held in Tarascon every year on the last Sunday of June to remember Tartarin and the unrelated Tarasque. Tartarin de Tarascon has been adapted into cinematic form three times, in 1908, 1934, and 1962, with each work being titled after its point of... less