French · Intermediate
Read Tartarin de Tarascon in Frenchwith every sentence explained
English title: Tartarin of Tarascon
Alphonse Daudet · 1872
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About the book
Tartarin de Tarascon by Alphonse Daudet was first published in 1872. In Passage you read the full text in the original French, marked intermediate and filed under historical fiction. It runs to about 27,700 words.
He has never left his little town, but in his dreams he is the greatest lion hunter in the world.
In sunny Tarascon, in Provence, the plump and peaceful Tartarin is a local hero. His garden is full of exotic plants, including a baobab in a flowerpot, his study bristles with weapons from every continent, and he is the champion of the town's cap hunters, who, for lack of game, shoot at their own caps thrown into the air.
Inside Tartarin live two men: a bold Don Quixote who longs for adventure, and a cautious Sancho Panza who loves his home comforts. One day his boasting goes too far, and the whole town expects him to sail to Algeria to hunt lions. Now there is no way out: he has to go...
Alphonse Daudet's affectionate satire of southern exaggeration is one of the funniest books in French literature, and Tartarin has become a byword for lovable braggarts.
- Author
- Alphonse Daudet
- First published
- 1872
- Language
- French
- Level
- Intermediate
- Genre
- Historical Fiction
- Length
- About 27,700 words
How it opens
Ma première visite à Tartarin de Tarascon est restée dans ma vie comme une date inoubliable ; il y a douze ou quinze ans de cela, mais je m’en souviens mieux que d’hier. L’intrépide Tartarin habitait alors, à l’entrée de la ville, la troisième maison à main gauche sur le chemin d’Avignon. Jolie petite villa tarasconnaise avec jardin devant, balcon derrière, des murs très-blancs, des persiennes vertes, et sur le pas de la porte une nichée de petits Savoyards jouant à la marelle ou dormant au bon soleil, la tête sur leurs boîtes à cirage.
Reading Tartarin de Tarascon in Passage
Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in French. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:
- a natural translation of that exact sentence,
- a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
- the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
- all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.
It's marked intermediate: comfortable once everyday French feels familiar, with the harder sentences one tap away. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.
