Other editions of book Penguin Island

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[Read by Frederick Davidson] First published in 1908, Penguin Island is widely regarded as Anatole France's masterpiece. Penguin Island is Anatole France's most searching and satirical novel. A humorous critique of customs and laws, rituals and rites, its subject is human nature, but its characters are penguins in the mythical land of Penguinia. The story of the strutting penguins and their virtues and vices is not merely a burlesque allegory of French history, but a satire of the history of mankind. With gentle yet biting irony, France challenges the Spencerian belief in the ultimate perfectibility of man, though his irony reveals his sympathy for man's weaknesses and his need for social institutions.

Penguin Island BOOK I. THE BEGINNINGS I. LIFE OF SAINT MAEL Mael, a scion of a royal family of Cambria, was sent in his ninth year to the Abbey of Yvern so that he might there study both sacred and profane learning. At the age of fourteen he renounced his patrimony and took a vow to serve the Lord. His time was divided, according to the rule, between the singing of hymns, the study of grammar, and the meditation of eternal truths. A celestial perfume soon disclosed the virtues of the monk throughout the cloister, and when the blessed Gal, the Abbot of Yvern, departed from this world into the next, young Mael succeeded him in the government of the monastery. He established therein a school, an infirmary, a guest-house, a forge, work-shops of all kinds, and sheds for building ships, and he compelled the monks to till the lands in the neighbourhood. With his own hands he cultivated the garden of the Abbey, he worked in metals, he instructed the novices, and his life was gently gliding along like a stream that reflects the heaven and fertilizes the fields.

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