Five peasant farmers beat up a distinguished author for revealing in his novel the darkest secrets of their hamlet, including adultery, suicide, inbreeding and alcoholism, a court was told yesterday.

Pierre Jourde claimed that he was attacked by his neighbours in the Auvergne, central France, after setting his novel, Pays Perdu (Lost Land), in the local community. He changed names, but people in Lussaud recognised themselves as the drunken, lonely and uncouth characters he depicted, Aurillac Criminal Court was told.

Members of three of the five families who live in the hamlet were charged with assaulting Mr Jourde and racially insulting two of his children, whose mother is an Arab. The villagers lay in wait as the writer returned to the farm that has belonged to his family for three centuries. They hit him, threw stones, injuring his 15-month-old baby, and shouted “filthy Arabs” at his two sons on July 31, 2005, the court was told.

Mr Jourde said that he hit back at Paul Anglade, who is 72. “I hurt him,” said the Professor of Literature at Grenoble University in eastern France and the author of six novels. “I punched him.”

Pays Perdu– a grim comedy about peasant farming tradition – was published in 2003 to critical acclaim in Paris and indifference in Lussaud. But a nearby grocery put a few copies on its counter. Residents read the book and were outraged.

The work focuses on the funeral of a local girl but weaves in other stories – all known to Lussaud’s 25 inhabitants but never mentioned to a wider public. Mr Jourde wrote, for instance, about the 1960s affair between two neighbours who have since returned to their spouses and whose children are married to each other.

He also denounced widespread alcoholism. “Rare are the houses where alcohol does not have its victims, its slaves,” he wrote.

The novel tells of the Sunday church service, where “hymns are interpreted without pleasure by people without importance, gently moving their lips”.

Jean-Marc Morel, the Mayor of Laurie, the district that includes Lussaud, said: “We knew this but we didn’t speak about it. He brought out evil things and I don’t know anyone who said he was right to do so.”

Mr Anglade said that the work insulted “our ancestors and here, you don’t touch the ancestors”. He accused the writer of betraying confidences. But Mr Jourde said that Pays Perdu was meant to convey a “globally positive” view of what he believes will be the last generation of French peasant farmers.

Virginie Dufayet, the state prosecutor, who is demanding the five are given six-month suspended sentences, said: “There was a smell of vengeance in this village.”

Maître Gilles-Jean Portejoie, for the defence, told Mr Jourde: “You wrote about their lives and their vices. You didn’t try to understand their motivations. You manipulated them, you played with them.”

In 2002 Mr Jourde’s scathing book Literature Without Guts won an award from the Académie Française, but infuriated French literary circles.

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