La Jumente Verte is the title of a humorous novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 writer Marcel Aymé

Marcel Aymé

Marcel Aymé was a French novelist, children's writer, humour writer and also a screenwriter and theatre playwright.- Biography :...

 first published by Gallimard in 1933.

The story is divided into seventeen chapters written using the third person narrative mode; interspersed between them are a number of interludes all entitled "The Observations of the Green Mare" which are written as first person narratives. These two different narrative modes used throughout the book allow the reader to observe the characters and situations from slightly different perspectives.

The novel is essentially an examination of the sexual mores and behaviors of the members of a small 19th century French village some time shortly following the Franco-Prussian War

Franco-Prussian War

The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...

. The plot concerns a feud

Feud

A feud , referred to in more extreme cases as a blood feud, vendetta, faida, or private war, is a long-running argument or fight between parties—often groups of people, especially families or clans. Feuds begin because one party perceives itself to have been attacked, insulted or wronged by another...

 that has taken place for generations between the Hadouin and Maloret families, and a missing letter that contains revealing secrets relating to the conflict. The green mare of the title is in fact a magical painting

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 of an unusually-colored horse

Horse

The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus, or the wild horse. It is a single-hooved mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature into the large, single-toed animal of today...

 owned by one of the Hadouins that has somehow been imbued with an observing consciousness

Consciousness

Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...

 by the artist who painted it.

La Jumente Verte has been translated into English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 by Norman Denny.

The book was filmed by Claude Autant-Lara

Claude Autant-Lara

Claude Autant-Lara , was a French film director and later Member of the European Parliament .-Biography:...

 in 1959.