A literary event: the long-awaited translation of one of the great masterpieces of twentieth-century fiction. Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort is Roger Martin du Gard's magnum opus, the crowning achievement of a career that included the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1937. Written over the final eighteen years of his life and intended to be read only posthumously, this tremendous creation sprang from the writer's unflinching examination of the conundrum of our moral ambivalence: why, knowing what is right, do people do wrong? Martin du Gard's complex response constitutes one of the most devastating critiques of human behavior ever produced. The author casts his reflections in the form of a memoir written by Bertrand de Maumort, an aristocrat, a soldier, an intellectual -- ostensibly the very flower of European culture at its zenith. Born in 1870, Maumort grows up in a ch&amp;3226;teau where a series of enlightened tutors tend to his education. Later, while preparing to enter the French military academy, he lives with his Uncle Eric, a powerful academic whose Sunday at-homes attract such luminaries as Renan, Turgenev, Daudet, and Pasteur. Keenly aware of his advantages, Maumort aspires to self-knowledge and a transcendent objectivity in his relations with the world. But as he describes his progress through life -- his early childhood, his experiences in the sexual hothouse of a Catholic boarding school, his affair with the beautiful Creole Doudou, his failed marriage to a sweet but adamantly conventional bourgeoise, his service in Morocco under the legendary colonialist General Lyautey, his participation in the First World War, and the occupation of his beloved ch&amp;3226;teau by German troops in the Second -- he unwittingly betrays an underside: his prejudices, self-deceptions, and moral lapses. Through his portrayal of Maumort and a fascinating array of secondary characters, Martin du Gard dissects mankind in general, and calls into question whether true civilization, much less human progress, exists at all. The result is a work of extraordinary honesty, combining the sweep of his acknowledged master Tolstoy, the penetrating analysis of Proust, and the speculative profundity of Montaigne. Left unfinished at the time of the author's death, Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort did not appear in print until 1983, when a definitive edition was established in French. Now, after seven years of preparation, Martin du Gard's splendid accomplishment, destined to be recognized as one of the summits of modern literature, is available to readers in this superb English translation.

Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Roger Martin Du Gard

Literary

KNOPF

Les Thibault 2: La Consultation / La Sorelina / La Mort du Pere (French Edition)

Gard, Roger Martin Du

French & European Pubns

De ce roman-fleuve racontant l'histoire de deux frères-Jacques Thibault, éternel révolté, tué pour s'être opposé à la guerre de 14 et Antoine, Thibault- se suicidant pour mettre fin aux souffrances engendrées par les séquelles physiques de blessures de guerre-il reste une saveur unique faité d'élans juvéniles, d'apirations à la réussite et à la reconnaissance sociales et la formidable image d'un Père, pater familias tonnant, étroit d'esprit, représentant d'un esprit "bourgeois", confit en bigoterie et en réaction. "La Mort du Père", cette euthanasie avant l'heure, reste un grand moment de dureté descriptive tant par le propos (le fils ainé tuant le père, voilà un sujet intéressant...) que par le détail d'une agonie vécue à travers la peur de la mort imminente.Pour le reste, la qualité romanesque l'emporte plus que largement sur la longueur du texte. A découvrir donc.Re

Oeuvres complètes, tome 1 (French Edition) Bibliotheque de la Pleiade

Genre Fiction

Het oude Frankrijk

Veen

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Books by Roger Martin Du Gard