Gilles (novel)

Gilles is a 1939 novel by the French writer Pierre Drieu La Rochelle. It follows the life of Gilles Gambier, a Frenchman who is disgusted with the bourgeois world, during World War I and the interwar period. After returning from the war, Gilles marries a Jewish woman for her wealth, becomes involved with the surrealist movement, develops his own fusion of Christianity and fascism, and joins the Nationalist faction to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The novel is partially autobiographical.[1] Drieu La Rochelle himself considered it to be his greatest book.[2]

Gilles
AuthorPierre Drieu La Rochelle
CountryFrance
LanguageFrench
PublisherÉditions Gallimard
Publication date
1939
Pages485

Reception

The French critic Gaëtan Picon wrote: "Gilles (1939) is, without any doubt, one of the greatest novels of the century—and one of those books in which the disarming sincerity of a man rises to the grandeur usually reserved to literary transpositions."[2]

References
  1. Taylor, Karen L. (2006). The Facts on File Companion to the French Novel. New York City: Infobase Publishing. p. 161. ISBN 9780816074990.
  2. Grover, Frédéric J. (1958). Drieu La Rochelle and the Fiction of Testimony. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 211.


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