Flemish House in Persian

The 1932 detective novel ‘Chez les Flamands,’ translated into English as ‘The Flemish House’ by Belgian writer Georges Simenon, was recently released in Persian.

The chilling novel is one of the series based on the fictional character Jules Maigret, created by Simenon (1903-1989). Maigret is a French police detective, a commissioner of the Paris Criminal Affairs Brigade.

Publishing house Jahan-e-Ketab institute of art and culture, based in Tehran, has brought out the Persian edition in the ‘Neqab’ (mask) series on detective stories. It is translated by prolific translator Abbas Agahi in 164 pages, Honaronline reported.

Set in the windswept, rainy town of Givet in northern France, the story finds the detective invited to the town by a young woman named Anna Peters who is desperate to clear her family of murder charge.  

Supposed to be on his vacation, Maigret instead finds himself unofficially in the town on the border between France and Belgium, where a young mother has disappeared.

The main problem is that there is no body; and without a body, there is no way to prove that a murder has taken place.

The Flemish family’s house in the town, their well-kept shop, the sleepy community and its raging river all hide their own mysteries.

Agahi, 77, has rendered other novels of the Maigret series into Persian, including Maigret Sets a Trap (1955), Maigret Has Scruples, (1957), Maigret Voyage (1957) and Maigret and the Apparition (1963), all in the Neqab series.

Simenon published 500 novels, but is best known as the creator of the fictional detective in his 75 novels and 28 short stories published between 1931 and 1972.

The character of Maigret was invented, but after the first few novels, was influenced by Chief Inspector Marcel Guillaume (1872-1963), said to be the greatest French detective of his day, who became a long-time friend of Simenon. Maigret is described as a large, broad shouldered man. He is gruff, but patient and fair.