Showing results for "The Notebook" in Biographical Fiction

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge) has been described as an anti-novel. It is set in Paris in the period just before the First World War, but it presents a bleaker milieu than that described by Proust. The language is terse, the atmosphere painful, the images uncompromising. Rilke drew on the short period he spent in Paris in 1903 where, in contrast to the rural circumstances in which he had lived before, he found the underbelly of urban life distressing.

André Gide, one of the masters of French literature, captures the essence of the philosophical Romantic in this profoundly personal first novel, completed when he was just twenty years old. Drawing heavily on his religious upbringing and private journals, The Notebooks of André Walter - with its “white” and “black” halves - tells the story of a young man pining for his forbidden love, cousin Emmanuelle. But his evocative memories and devoted yearnings lead only to madness and death.

Nobel Prize-winning writer André Gide lays bare his adolescent psyche in this early work, first conceived and published as part of his novel The Notebooks of André Walter, completed when he was just 20 years old. This profoundly personal work draws heavily on his religious upbringing and private journals to tell the story of a young man who, like the author, pines for his forbidden love, Cousin Emmanuelle. This unique portrait of Gide as a young man presents the passions and conflicts, temptations and anguish he would explore in maturity.