Le Roi des Aulnes is a novel by the French novelist Michel Tournier. He learned German. He studied philosophy at the Sorbonne and at the university of Tübingen and then became a journalist and a writer. Tournier is a French writer. He is the author of several novels. He published more than twenty books. He was a member of the Académie Goncourt and he won the Prix Goncourt for his novel Le Roi des Aulnes in 1970. It is also known as The Ogre.
This novel is about a French prisoner in Germany who assists the Nazis during the World War II by searching for boys for a Nazi military camp. He recruits children to be Nazis in the belief that he is protecting them.
The Ogre is a familiar character in mythology, folklore and fiction throughout the world. It is a kind of giant. An ogre is a legendary monster usually depicted as a large, hideous, man-like being that eats ordinary human being, especially infants and children.
Tournier describes the World War II as the Ogre. Interrelation between myth and literature are very complex.