What Became of the White Savage enjoyed phenomenal success in France where it won nine literary prizes including the prestigious Goncourt Prize in the first novel category.
Some time in the 1840s, Narcisse, a young French sailor is abandoned on the coast of Australia and given up for dead by his shipmates. Seventeen years later he is found living among aboriginal peoples, having apparently forgotten everything of his original identity, including his native French language. Octave de Vallombrun, a well-meaning geographer, takes him under his wing and sets out to bring Narcisse, now known as the 'white savage' back to civilisation and to find out what happened during those seventeen years.
Observing Narcisse's struggle to adjust to the ways of the white man, Octave too begins to question his assumptions about what it means to be civilised, and to see in a new light the man known as the 'white savage'.
It will appeal to readers interested in the issues of identity, belonging and competing cultural values.
Born in 1959, Francois Garde grew up in Aix-en-Provence and studied at the prestigious Ecole Nationale d'Administration before embarking upon a career as a senior civil servant. He worked for many years in the French Overseas Territories in the Southern Pacific and Indian Oceans, before becoming a novelist. Published in 2012, What Became of the White Savage, is Garde's first novel. Winner of nine literary prizes, including the prestigious Prix Goncourt in the first novel category for 2012.