A Song for Drowned Souls (Commandant Servaz 2)

Travel Guide

Marsac, the Pyrenees

In the translator’s note at the start of the novel, she says that Marsac is a fictional town but that its institutions and inhabitants represent the academic creme de la creme preparing students for the very competitive entrance exams to the Grandes Ecoles. These are unique universities which are very selective and groom students to be future leaders of the country.

The author was born in Beziers, at the foot of the Pyrenees mountains so we’ve put this on the literary map as well the man practically create Marsac himself so his home town has to be visited in order to pay homage to him and his fiction.

Marsac is a quaint university town and Oliver enjoys writing poetry in the shadow of his idols, He used to be the only English man here but that was before the English swopped down like a swam of locusts”

The landscape is clearly grim at the start – for the first chapter takes place in a tomb and the second brings you straight tin to Marsac under a storm and a flash of light