Alice Kaplan

Louis Guilloux

Louis Guilloux?s novel Blood Darktells the story of a brilliant philosopher trapped in a provincial town and of his spiraling descent into self-destruction. Cripure, as his students call him, the name a mocking contraction of The Critique of Pure Reason, despises his colleagues, despairs of his charges, and is at odds with his family. The year is 1917, and the First World War continues its relentless course, with French soldiers not only dying by the tens of thousands but also beginning to desert in protest. Cripure, having seen student after student go to his death, finds himself literally up in arms at the complacent patriotism of his fellow teachers as he challenges one of them to a duel. Unfolding over the course of a single day, Blood Darkdescribes how Cripure manages to embroil himself in this ridiculous "affair of honor." Guilloux?s novel, an important inspiration to the young Albert Camus, is an unflinching attack on the hypocritical pieties of a middle-class society and a tragic portrait of a man at war with the world and himself.

Blood Dark

Le pain des rêves

La Maison Du Peuple Suivi

Set during World War I, this monumental philosophical novel about human despair inspired Albert Camus' own writing and prefigured the greater existential movement. Blood Dark tells the story of a brilliant philosopher trapped in a provincial town and of his spiraling descent into self-destruction. Cripure, as his students call him—the name a mocking contraction of Critique of Pure Reason—despises his colleagues, despairs of his charges, and is at odds with his family. The year is 1917, and the slaughter of the First World War goes on and on, with French soldiers not only dying in droves but also beginning to rise up in protest. Still haunted by the memory of the wife who left him long ago, Cripure turns his fury and scathing wit on everyone around him. Before he knows it, a trivial dispute with a complacently patriotic colleague has embroiled him in a duel.

A disturbing novel based on the author's own diaries from World War II follows a Frenchman employed by the U.S. military to help document the crimes committed by American soldiers in France, offering a seldom-seen perspective on racism, GI culture, and American idealism. (Historical Fiction)

Louis Guilloux

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