{"product_id":"into-their-labours","title":"Into Their Labours","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cmeta charset=\"utf-8\"\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn the early 1970s, at the height of his fame, novelist and art critic John Berger moved to a small Alpine village in the Haute-Savoie. There he worked for nearly two decades on \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eInto Their Labours\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, a trilogy of works that blend stories, essays, and poems to chronicle European peasant culture and its gradual eclipse in the twentieth century. With a tenderness free of nostalgia, Berger writes of a traditional, earthbound world which is being left behind by the technocratic forces of markets and capitalism.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eIn \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003ePig Earth\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, the lives of men and women in a mountain village are still governed by ancient cycles of calves born and pigs slaughtered, of summer haymaking and long dark winters of rest. In \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eOnce in Europa\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, the old ways have been upended by machinery and modernization, in the tumult of which love’s labors are lost and found in turn. And in \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eLilac and Flag\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e, the village has been forsaken as the children and grandchildren of rural peasants pursue meagre livings as best they can in alien metropolises.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAt once an ode to the resilience and passion of peasants, a blistering critique of capitalist progress and productivity, and a prescient and compassionate portrait of urban migration, which has hollowed out rural villages and towns everywhere, \u003c\/span\u003e\u003ci\u003eInto Their Labours\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cspan\u003e is a literary tour-de-force, on par with the best of Zola and Dickens.\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"New York Review Books","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":55775685181608,"sku":"9798896231233","price":24.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0726\/9203\/files\/Art_CoverImageNotAvailable02_a197fa16-b939-4893-aa88-baf79d5c94fc.jpg?v=1740683924","url":"https:\/\/www.nyrb.com\/products\/into-their-labours","provider":"New York Review Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}