Book description
With this haunting first volume of his Into Their Labours trilogy, John Berger begins his chronicle of the eclipse of peasant cultures in the twentieth century. Set in a small village in the French Alps, Pig Earth relates the stories of skeptical, hard-working men and fiercely independent women; of calves…
Why read it?
1 author picked Pig Earth as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This is French peasant life in its last days, a life rendered from the outside by one who became an insider.
Berger went to live and work among the peasants of the French south in 1962. This world, like that of Spain at much the same time, saw the death of the old peasantry. It is not a work of observation like Norman Lewis’s book but a series of fictional stories. It treats peasants as human beings, on an equal standing with all others in society. They have depth and gravity. Just like us all.
How awful most writing about…
From Patrick's list on vanishing human worlds.
If you love Pig Earth...
Cyborg Fever
From Pulitzer Finalist Laurie Sheck (A Monster's Notes), a new speculative literary fiction in the spirit of Italo Calvino, Umberto Ecco and Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto that enacts an incisive and moving exploration into what it means to be human in the age of AI and increasing inhumanism.…
Want books like Pig Earth?
Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like Pig Earth.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,277
readers submitted
so far, will you?
