Word: poissonard
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Monsieur and Madame Poissonard are a modest little Parisian couple who keep a modest little dairy shop called An Bon Beurre. In 1950 the Poissonards have 47 million francs, a garish apartment, a country estate, and a son-in-law who is a member of parliament. The shortest distance between these two points is crooked-and savagely funny. French Satirist Jean (A Dog's Head) Dutourd has lampooned not only war profiteers but France itself, a country which has earned more justly than England, the reputation of being "a nation of shopkeepers...
Cash-Register Clausewitz. As they scurry out of Paris before the Nazi Panzers and Stukas in the summer of 1940, Papa and Mama Poissonard and family seem no better off than anyone else Papa is built like a beer barrel and Mama like a bathtub, but they do have a nose for news, and word reaches them within a week that the Germans are most "correct." They race back to the Bon Beurre, to do a little business-as-usual...
...customers are not only mercilessly fleeced (watered milk, tapped scales) but also lectured on the virtues of the Germans, the vices of the French, the cunning treachery of the Jews. Papa Poissonard is a happy man: "He had found the means to be systematically dishonest, that dream of all honest people, and . . . felt not in the least ashamed...
| 1 |