''L'Herbe à brûler'' (''A Weed for Burning'') is a Belgian

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

Conrad Detrez Conrad Detrez (1 April 1937, in Roclenge-sur-Geer – 11 February 1985, in Paris) was a Belgian (from 1982 on French) journalist, diplomat and novelist. Biography Conrad Detrez grew up in a small village in the Belgian countryside. In 1962 he tr ...

. It is the third volume of his "hallucinated autobiography" trilogy, following ''Ludo'' (1974) and ''Les plumes du coq'' (''The Plumes of the Rooster'', 1975). Published in 1978, it was awarded the Prix Renaudot the same year and is Detrez's best-known work. The novel is about a Roman Catholic from Belgium who, after years as a revolutionary in Brazil, returns to Europe and finds it enervated. It was first published in English by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1984, translated by Lydia Davis.

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