Into Their Labours
Novel , 1991
Independent Book Club
Pages: 616
In 1973, John Berger, nearly fifty years old, settled in Haute-Savoie in the small village of Mieussy. In 1974, John Berger embarked on Into Their Labours, a trilogy of novels that traces the journey of the European peasant from the mountains to the metropolis. Pig Earth, Once in Europa and Lilac and Flag are the three volumes that make up the trilogy.
Without idealism or nostalgia, John Berger captures various moments of this changing world, whose testimonies illustrate the connection to time, to the land, to love as well, and the values of preservation in the face of encroaching change. Both a fictional novel and an engaged documentary novel, the narrative accounts for the evolution of the peasant world. Life in a traditional village for Pig Earth, the first volume of this trilogy. Its transformations and profound changes in Once in Europa, with the advent of mechanization, European planning, and up to Monsanto's pesticides. The third volume, Lilac and Flag, recounts the forced exile of peasants, torn from their land, towards the metropolis and the difficult integration into urban life. A historical, universal evolution, whose story has continued to unfold before our eyes, albeit hidden from view, isolated atop our mountains.
Between fiction, documentary, and autobiography, it is with great sensitivity that the British author shows us behind these faces the great distress of a profession so often denigrated in the face of capitalist modernity.