The Proles

This book, one of the classics of working class testimony, is also an testimony of learning as may be found in novels. We follow a very young apprentice, from an agricultural background, for whom becoming a member of the working class is a stage on the path to social promotion. It is in the shipyards of Saint-Nazaire that the boilermaker joins the class of disenchanted labourers, in a dramatic crescendo culminating in the general strike of 1955.