Pierre Drieu La Rochelle

Adapted to film by both Louis Malle and Joachim Trier, this heart-rending and tenderly wrought novel narrates the decline of an artist and heroin addict in 1920s Paris. Pierre Drieu la Rochelle might be said to be both the Hemingway and the Fitzgerald of twentieth-century French literature, a battle-scarred veteran of the First World War whose work chronicles the trials and tribulations of a lost generation, a man about town, a heartbreaker with a broken heart, a literary stylist whose work is as tough as it is lyrical and polished. Politically compromised as Drieu came to be by his affiliation with the fascist right and collaboration under Nazi occupation—Drieu committed suicide at the end of the war—his novels remain vivid reflections of a broken spiritual and political world of the interwar years and as works of art, and to this day they are widely read and greatly admired in France. The Fire Within, which has been successfully adapted to the screen by Louis Malle and more recently Joachim Trier, is the lacerating tale of Alain Leroy, a war veteran and beautiful young man of whom the world is expected but who has taken refuge from the world in drugs. After being institutionalized, Alain emerges to try to put his life together again, but in spite of the attentions of friends and lovers, he struggles to find his way.

The Fire Within

A Novel

Will O' the Wisp

Fuoco fatuo

Récit secret

Finds a man on the verge of suicide looking for one person so committed to life that they can give him an argument for living.

"This novel covers the last forty-eight tragic hours in the life of a young drug addict, Alain. At the opening of the novel he is living in a fashionable clinic, ostensibly receiving a 'cure' for his addiction. His life has always been an empty one. He has lived off women ever since he was able, money having always been a bigger inducement to marriage or the taking of a mistress than love. He has always had vague 'projects' which would occupy him but which his spiritual paralysis has prevented him from putting into action. In these last hours of his life Alain searches among his friends and acquaintances for an example, for one person so committed to life, so obviously leading a fruitful, meaningful existence that they can give him an argument for life. He finds no such example and commits suicide." "Will O' The Wisp was first published in France in 1931 and was based on the actual suicide of one of the author's friends."--BOOK JACKET.

Pierre Drieu La Rochelle

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