Jean Giono

Joy of Man's Desiring is a 1936 novel by the French writer Jean Giono. The story takes place in an early 20th-century farmer's community in southern France, where the inhabitants suffer from a mysterious disease, while a healer tries to save them by teaching the value of joy. The title is taken from Johann Sebastian …

In 1910, while hiking through the wild lavender in a wind-swept, desolate valley in Provence, a man comes across a shepherd called Elzéard Bouffier. Staying with him, he watches Elzéard sorting and then planting hundreds of acorns as he walks through the wilderness. Ten years later, after the war, he visits the …