The Provençal town of Tarascon is so enthusiastic about hunting that no game lives anywhere near it, and its inhabitants resort to telling hunting stories and throwing their own caps in the air to shoot at them. Tartarin, a plump middle-aged man, is the chief "cap-hunter", but following his enthusiastic reaction to seeing an Atlas lion in a travelling menagerie, the over-imaginative town understands him to be planning a hunting expedition to Algeria. (Auszug aus Wikipedia)
Alphonse Daudet, (born May 13, 1840, Nîmes, France—died Dec. 16, 1897, Paris?), French short-story writer and novelist, now remembered chiefly as the author of sentimental tales of provincial life in the south of France.