Jo Doumerg

The daily lives of the inhabitants of "le Mistral", an imaginary neighbourhood in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, where wealthy families cross paths with the less than rich.

Annie and Peter Mayle decide, in their own words, to take the plunge: they quit their jobs as a tax investigator and an advertising executive and move to Provence in the south of France. Their first month goes from outstanding to downright puzzling: while they adore the food and wine, they encounter amusing cultural barriers.

When her husband goes missing at the beach, a female professor begins to mentally disintegrate as her denial of his disappearance becomes delusional.

In a rural French village, an old man and his only remaining relative cast their covetous eyes on an adjoining vacant property. They need its spring water for growing their flowers, and are dismayed to hear that the man who has inherited it is moving in. They block up the spring and watch as their new neighbour tries to keep his crops watered from wells far afield through the hot summer. Though they see his desperate efforts are breaking his health and his wife and daughter's hearts, they think only of getting the water.

Romain, a well read and articulate real estate agent, protects his grandmother from a bailiff that wants to seize her property,

Winegrower Patrick Ponsac comes close to ruining his marriage when he has an affair with another woman. By way of atonement, he takes his wife back to the Mediterranean island where, 13 years earlier, they spent their honeymoon. Not such a good move, as it turns out. The peacemaking holiday coincides with the outbreak of a bloody civil war. Having failed to leave the country, Patrick, his wife and their eccentric entourage are taken hostage by merciless guerrillas…

The daily lives of the inhabitants of "le Mistral", an imaginary neighbourhood in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, where wealthy families cross paths with the less than rich.

Annie and Peter Mayle decide, in their own words, to take the plunge: they quit their jobs as a tax investigator and an advertising executive and move to Provence in the south of France. Their first month goes from outstanding to downright puzzling: while they adore the food and wine, they encounter amusing cultural barriers.