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In the course of his career Ramuz covered every literary genre, but with a predilection for the novel, which became the best-known part of his work. He also wrote short stories, poetry, essays, plays, autobiographies and diaries, as well as chronicles and reviews.

On the face of it, these forms of writing seem dissimilar, and even more so if we consider their evolution over the years. The diversity of the novels themselves has led critics to try and classify them. What unites the mountain novels and the texts evoking Lavaux? What do the essays and fiction have in common? Yet, for all the apparent heterogeneity of his output, Ramuz’s entire body of work is in fact underpinned by the same vision of the human condition, and is concerned to render as closely as possible its essential—that is, tragic—reality.