This novel covers the last forty-eight tragic hours in the life of a young drug addict, Alain. At the opening of the novel he is living in a fashionable clinic, ostensibly receiving a 'cure' for his addiction. His life has always been an empty one. He has lived off women ever since he was able, money having always been a bigger inducement to marriage or the taking of a mistress than love. He has always had vague 'projects' which would occupy him but which his spiritual paralysis has prevented him from putting into action. In these last hours of his life Alain searches among his friends and acquaintances for an example, for one person so committed to life, so obviously leading a fruitful, meaningful existence that they can give him an argument for life. He finds no such example and commits suicide. Will O' The Wisp was first published in France in 1931 and was based on the actual suicide of one of the author's friends.

Will O' The Wisp

Literature & Fiction

DRIEU LA ROCHELLE, Pierre

World Literature

Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd

Secret journal and other writings;

Rivers P. Ltd

The young European

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

lulu.com

In this essay published in 1934, the writer Pierre Drieu la Rochelle demonstrates the fundamental contradictions of Marxism and draws a parallel between Soviet-style communism and the Italian and German fascist regimes, whose rapprochement he in a way welcomes by declaring himself in turn a socialist and a fascist...

Fascist Socialism

History

Europe

Adapted to film by both Louis Malle and Joachim Trier, this heart-rending and tenderly wrought novel narrates the decline of an artist and heroin addict in 1920s Paris. Pierre Drieu la Rochelle might be said to be both the Hemingway and the Fitzgerald of twentieth-century French literature, a battle-scarred veteran of the First World War whose work chronicles the trials and tribulations of a lost generation, a man about town, a heartbreaker with a broken heart, a literary stylist whose work is as tough as it is lyrical and polished. Politically compomised as Drieu came to be by his affiliation with the fascist right and collaboration under Nazi occupation--Drieu committed suicide at the end of the war--his novels remain vivid reflections of a broken spiritual and political world of the interwar years and as works of art, and to this day they are widely read and greatly admired in France. The Fire Within, which has been successfully adapted to the screen by Louis Malle and more recently Joachim Trier, is the lacerating tale of Alain Leroy, a war veteran and beautiful young man of whom the world is expected but who has taken refuge from the world in drugs. After being institutionalized, Alain emerges to try to put his life together again, but in spite of the attentions of friends and lovers, he struggles to find his way.

The Fire Within

United States

NYRB Classics

The Man on Horseback is Pierre Drieu la Rochelle's powerful novel of a South American Caudillo who seizes control of the Bolivian government and dreams of reestablishing the glory of the Incan Empire. A tragic tale of a populist leader who seizes power from the corrupt establishment, but then must struggle to hold onto it as the old guard plot their revenge, and as the forces he unleashes begin to spiral out of his control. Told through the voice of a lowly guitar player who is witness to the great events, as well as a participant, The Man on Horseback is a study of realpolitik in action, full of intrigue and plots by Masons, the Church, and the old aristocracy, as well as a meditation on the relation between action and contemplation, between art and heroism.

The Man on Horseback

Genre Fiction

Rogue Scholar Press

Pierre Drieu la Rochelle's harrowing novel of modern decadence and despair, now available again in a new translation. A vitalist writer's portrait of modern existential malaise, exemplified in the life of a young drug addict, a man who can see through the emptiness of domesticated half-life, but who finds no outlet for his drives, no line of escape.\n"Very few novels of this period have portrayed in such realistic terms the complete isolation of the individual in a world where even the most elementary communication is impossible." - Thomas Hines

Ghost Light

Gilles by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle (Volume I)

La Rochelle, Pierre Drieu

Ritter, Yusuf

Arts & Literature

Tikhanov Library Editions

Sur les écrivains

Essays & Correspondence

Gallimard]

Fragment de Mémoires: (1940-1941)

Reference

Foreign Language Study & Reference

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Books by DRIEU LA ROCHELLE, Pierre