André Gide Books

Shatters various images of Andre Gide as the querulous and impious Buddha to a quarter-century of intellectuals.

During the author's travels, he meets Menalcas, a caricature of Oscar Wilde, who relates his fantastic life story. But for all his brilliance, Menalcas is only Gide's yesterday self, a discarded wraith who leaves Gide free to stop exalting the ego and embrace bodily and spiritual joy.

Theseus, mythical hero of Athens, narrates his life story in an existential vacuum following the failure of his marriages, the death of his son, Hippolytus, his own famous exploits a distant memory. Tragedy punctuates this narrative, as it does his drama, Oedipus, also published here, both works elaborating through myth an unanswerable search for self.

Michel had been a blindfold scholar until, newly married, he contracted tuberculosis. His will to recover brings self-discovery and the growing desire to rebel against his background of culture, decency and morality. But the freedom from constraints that Michel finds on his restless travels is won at great cost.

A slim but powerful work of metafiction by a Nobel Prize-winning French writer and intellectual. André Gide is the inventor of modern metafiction and of autofiction, and his short novel Marshlands shows him handling both forms with a deft and delightful touch. The protagonist of Marshlands is a writer who is writing a book called Marshlands, which is about a reclusive character who lives all alone in a stone tower. The narrator, by contrast, is anything but a recluse: He is an indefatigable social butterfly, flitting about the Paris literary world and always talking about, what else, the wonderful book he is writing, Marshlands. He tells his friends about the book, and they tell him what they think, which is not exactly flattering, and of course those responses become part of the book in the reader’s hand. Marshlands is both a poised satire of literary pretension and a superb literary invention, and Damion Searls’s new translation of this early masterwork by one of the key figures of twentieth-century literature brings out all the sparkle of the original.

Jerome Palissier spends many summers at his uncle's house in the Normandy countryside. There he falls in love with his cousin Alissa and she with him. But gradually she becomes convinced that Jerome's love for her is endangering his soul. In the interests of his salvation, she decides to suppress everything that is beautiful in herself. schovat popis

Madeleine is the story of a great writer's marriage, a deeply disturbing account of André Gide's feelings towards his beloved and long-suffering wife. It was a relationship which Gide exalted―he termed it the central drama of his existence―yet deliberately shrouded in mystery. This was no ordinary marriage. Madeleine Rondeaux, two years older than her cousin André Gide, became his wife after Gide's first visit to Algeria. In his Journal, Gide refers to her as Emmanuèle or as Em. Only in this book, published a few months after his death, does Gide call her by her real name and painfully reveal the nature of their life together. All of Gide's vast work may be viewed as a confession, impelled by his need to write what he believed to be true about himself. In Madeleine this act of confession reaches a crowning point. It is a complex tale by a complex man about a complex relationship. “Ranks among the masterpieces of Gide's vibrating prose. It is also the most tragic personal document to have emanated from Gide's pen.”― New York Times .

Exploring themes of rebellion and the quest for knowledge, this literal translation captures the essence of the original French text. The narrative delves into the myth of Prometheus, examining the consequences of defiance against divine authority and the pursuit of enlightenment. Through vivid language and rich imagery, the translator, Lilian Rothermere, brings forth the complexities of the characters and their struggles, inviting readers to reflect on the balance between ambition and morality.