in a ruined world where humans have lost the skills of flight fever crumb a clever young engineer is swept up in a race to build the first flying machine her mysterious companion is a boy who talks to angels but powerful enemies stalk themeither to possess their revolutionary invention or to destroy the secrets of flight forever an international bestseller and winner of the prix goncourt frances most prestigious literary award the ogre is a masterful tale of innocence perversion and obsession it follows the passage of strange gentle abel tiffauges from submissive schoolboy to ogre of the nazi school at the castle of kaltenborn taking us deeper into the dark heart of fascism than any novel since the tin drum until the very last page when abel meets his mystic fate in the collapsing ruins of the third reich it shocks us dazzles us and above all holds us spellbound