Penguin Island

Summary

'Believe me, the best proof is to have none at all. That is the only evidence one cannot debate.'

Anatole France's 1908 novel Penguin Island offers a thinly veiled lampoon of French history and of human civilization. When a wayward Christian missionary monk lands on an island off the northern coast of Europe, he perceives the island's seabirds, a colony of upright, unafraid auks, as a sort of pre-Christian society of noble pagans and baptizes them. This causes a problem for God, who normally only allows humans to be baptized. He resolves the dilemma by converting the baptized birds to humans and giving them each a soul. The ensuing history of Penguinia presents a comic send-up of the foibles and frailty of humanity.

The novel's centerpiece is an immensely skillful and scathing parody of the Dreyfus Affair, which stands alongside Émile Zola's 'J'accuse' for its humanity and intellectual bravery. This new translation, more than a century after the first and only English version, offers a full introduction to the novel, setting it in its historical and literary context, including France's life and rich literary legacy.