This is Andreas Gide’s 1931 novella, “Two Symphonies”. It's the story of a blind girl who is adopted by a pastor with a large family, and describes the unfortunate turmoil and friction that ensue. This marvellous tale is highly recommended for fans of Gide’s work, and would make for a fantastic addition to any collection. André Paul Guillaume Gide (1869–1951) was a French author who won the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature. His work often takes on the form of an exploration of freedom, and i...

“My novel hasn’t got a subject. Yes, I know it sounds stupid…let’s say, if you prefer it, it hasn’t got one subject…and the subject of the book, if you must have one, is just that the very struggle between what reality offers him and what he himself desires to make of it.”In a novel about a novelist writing a novel that mirrors the novel he is in, what is the reality of the story? The Counterfeiters, written by Nobel Prize winner, André Gide, is an impressively layered and...

"Prometheus Illbound" is a satirical and symbolic reimagining of the Greek myth of Prometheus, the titan who was punished by the gods for giving fire to humanity. In this version, Prometheus is no longer tightly bound to a rock as in the traditional myth, but rather, he is loosely chained—hence the title "illbound." He is free to walk around and interact with other characters, which leads to a series of philosophical dialogues.Prometheus is portrayed as disillusioned with humanity and unce...

Nobel Prize–winning writer André Gide marks his voyage toward self-discovery in this imaginative allegorical workWhen Urien and his sailing companions begin their voyage, it is to places unknown and, perhaps, only dreamed. This allegorical masterpiece from André Gide, a key figure of French letters, deftly illustrates the techniques and doctrine of the Symbolist movement—and the dual nature of Gide's own psyche. Written at a crucial time in his artistic development...

This collection of reflective essays forms a "spiritual autobiography" of André Gide, a key figure of French lettersAndré Gide, a literary and intellectual giant of twentieth-century France, mines his memories and personal observations in this collection of essays. Gide's reflections and commentary masterfully showcase his delicate writing style and evocative sensibility, yielding new insights on writers such as Goethe and contemporaries Joseph Con...

The Immoralist by André Gide is a profound and psychologically intense novel that explores the struggle between personal desire and moral constraint. Through the intimate portrait of a young man's inner awakening, the story examines how illness, recovery, and self-discovery can radically reshape one's understanding of identity, freedom, and responsibility. The narrative follows Michel, a scholar who, after surviving a serious illness, embarks on a journey of self-exploration that leads him...

Published in 1902, André Gide's The Immoralist is a deliberately unsettling confession in which Michel, a cultivated French scholar, recounts the illness, marriage, and spiritual crisis that awaken him to sensual experience. As his physical recovery becomes inseparable from a rejection of inherited moral, religious, and bourgeois restraints, the novella probes whether liberation is genuinely emancipatory or merely another form of self-absorption. Gide's lucid, restrained prose contrasts wi...

Strait is the Gate by André Gide is a profound reflection on love, sacrifice, and the quest for spiritual perfection. Published in 1909, this work focuses on the characters Alissa and Jérôme, who share mutual affection from childhood, but whose love is marked by renunciation and suffering.Through this story, Gide explores themes such as emotional repression, the conflicts between desire and morality, and the ways in which religious or philosophical ideals can shape...

During the 1930s, Gide briefly became a communist, or more precisely, a fellow traveller (he never formally joined the Communist Party). As a distinguished writer sympathising with the cause of communism, he was invited to tour the Soviet Union as a guest of the Soviet Union of writers. The tour disillusioned him and he subsequently became quite critical of Soviet Communism. This criticism of Communism caused him to lose socialist friends, especially when he made a clean break with it in t...

The wealthy Zeus drops a handkerchief in the street, and whoever picks it up must give him the name and address of one other person.That person is then rewarded with untold riches, while the finder of the handkerchief receives a punch in the face.This novella, a work of refined intellectual imagination, is a satirical discussion of man's search for individual values.'Prometheus Illbound' will delight fans of Gide's other notable works, such as ´The Fruits of the Ear...

Personal recollections from André Gide on a man who profoundly influenced his work—Oscar WildeAndré Gide, a towering figure in French letters, draws upon his friendship with Oscar Wilde to sketch a compelling portrait of the tragic, doomed author, both celebrated and shunned in his time. Rather than compile a complete biography, Gide invites us to discover Wilde as he did—from their first meeting in 1891 to their final parting just two years before Wilde's death—al...

An inspiring discourse on the power of music from one of the twentieth century's most important figures, André GideAndré Gide, one of the great intellectuals of the twentieth century and a devoted pianist, invites readers to reevaluate Frédéric Chopin as a composer "betrayed . . . deeply, intimately, totally violated" by a music community that had fundamentally misinterpreted his work. As a profound admirer of Chopin's "promenade of discoveries," Gide intersperses ...