Description
Book SynopsisIn the late 1930s and early 1940s, Roger Martin du Gard was one of the most famous writers in the Western world. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1937, and his works, especially Les Thibault, a multivolume novel, were translated into English and read widely. Today, this close friend of André Gide, Albert Camus, and André Malraux is almost unknown, largely because he left unfinished the long project he began in the 1940s, Lieutenant Colonel de Maumort. Initially, the novel is an account of the French experience during World War II and the German occupation as seen through the eyes of a retired army officer. Yet, through Maumort''s series of recollections, it becomes a morality tale that questions the values of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European civilization. A fragmentary version of the novel was published in 1983, twenty-five years after its author''s death, and an English translation appeared in 1999. Even incomplete, it is a work of hauntin
Trade Review
Rigorously researched and well-written. Martin is an engaging guide as he measures the milestones through Martin du Gard's intellectual odyssey. Martin also provides an insight into the writer's literary corpus that both the specialist and non-specialist reader will find illuminating. And so in this book, a writer who has been closely associated with literary luminaries such as André Gide, Albert Camus and André Malraux finally receives the attention he undoubtedly deserves in his own right.
* French History *
An impressive achievement.
* The Key Reporter *
Martin offers the first in-depth, intimate English-language biography of reserved 20th-century French novelist Roger Martin du Gard.... Martin disclose[s] the most intimate side of his very private subject.
* Choice *
Overall, this biography of Martin du Gard invites exploration of his understudied novels. Additionally, the theme of inner struggle is accentuated by a fascinating parallel between Martin du Gard's difficulty with Catholicism and the conflicts in Europe that spurred the World Wars. In both domains, the capacity of the individual to make his or her own choices, within a society that expects narrowly-defined ones, is paramount.
* French Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
1. Illusions
2. Realities
3. Hubris
4. Retribution
5. Vindication
6. Triumph
7. Displaced
8. Discomfited
9. Bereft
10. Estrangement
11. Afterlife
Notes
Index
