Tartarin de Tarascon is a silly novel about a middle-aged man who is forced to protect his reputation by going hunting in Algeria. 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 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 traveling menagerie, the over-imaginative town understands him to be planning a hunting expedition to Algeria.