Georges Simenon was born on 12 February 1903 in Liège, Belgium, and died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.
Completed in 1933, Mr Hire’s Engagement is one of Simenon’s early novels. It recreates a scene that the author witnessed as a young reporter in Liège, a scene which continued to haunt him for years afterwards: that of an angry mob, and a man chased on to a roof, clinging to the cornice to keep from falling to his death.