Le Calvaire is a thinly veiled autobiographical novel, which recounts the tortured and traumatic coming-of-age of the narrator Jean Mintie. It paints a nightmarish picture of late 19th century French society: from the stultifying boredom of French provincialism, to the horrors of the Franco-Prussian war, the gross avarice of shameless women and the moral bankruptcy of their compliant victims.
