In a review of the first published English translation of Derborence, entitled When the mountain fell, The New York Times wrote that Ramuz "has long been recognized in France, as well as in his native Switzerland, as a writer of stature: in 1945 he was a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature".
[1] Derborence was described by the Macmillan Guide to Modern World Literature in its section on Ramuz, as the "most fully satisfying of his twenty-two novels".
On 23 September 1714, a section of the Diablerets massif, located in the neighbouring canton to the Vaud, the Valais, collapsed following an earthquake two years earlier.
[4] As is the custom in the Swiss Alps around midsummer, Antoine Pont and his uncle by marriage, Séraphin, have taken their cows up into the mountains in search of fresh pasture.
Convinced that his uncle is still alive and merely trapped beneath the boulders, as he was, Antoine decides to return to the site of the landslide to rescue Séraphin.