There is much dispute as to where the magical party in Alain Fournier's novel Le Grand Meaulnes was set, despite the fact that it was clearly an imaginary mixture of many places. Fournier was born in La Chapelle d'Angillon, 24km south of Argent-sur-Sauldre on the D940. He spent much of his childhood in the Château there, but went to school in Épineuil-le-Fleurial (the Ste-Agathe of the novel) well beyond the Sologne and Bourges, some 25km south of St-Armand-Montrond (turn right off the Montluçon road from Bourges to cross the Cher at Meaulne). Albicoco's film of the book was shot around Épineuil, where the elementary school described in the book now houses a small museum. But the "domain with no name" where the fête étrange takes place is certainly in the Sologne: "In the whole of the Sologne," he wrote, "it would have been hard to find a more desolate spot."
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