Product Description
At the peak of his career, after having established himself as an accomplished writer, astute moraliste, and the foremost spokesperson of his generation for personal freedom and self-realization, Gide became aware, first, that his particular brand of bourgeois individualism was becoming increasingly irrelevant in the contemporary world and, second, that social commitment and even revolution could serve as a powerful source of inspiration and self-renewal. Over a ten-year period that began in the 1920s and ended with his public break with the Soviet Union in 1936, Gide the committed intellectual interacted with society in ways that were for him unprecedented. These essays examine the outcomes of Gide's evolving commitment to a host of controversial issues ranging from the sexual to the political, from the literary to the social.At the peak of his career, after having established himself as an accomplished writer, astute moraliste, and the foremost spokesperson of his generation for personal freedom and self-realization, Gide became aware, first, that his particular brand of bourgeois individualism was becoming increasingly irrelevant in the contemporary world and, second, that social commitment and even revolution could serve as a powerful source of inspiration and self-renewal. Over a ten-year period that began in the 1920s and ended with his public break with the Soviet Union in 1936, Gide the committed intellectual interacted with society in ways that were for him unprecedented. These essays examine the outcomes of Gide's evolving commitment to a host of controversial issues ranging from the sexual to the political, from the literary to the social. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The All-Time Greatest Book
I recently bought a used copy of this book here.I had already read much of it in college, and it is wonderful. ...

In particular, the book includes Gide's "Le Retourde L'Enfant Prodigue," which is my favorite work of his.There are also selections from nearly all of Gide's works, and complete translations of "L'Immoraliste" and "La Symphonie Pastorale" are included. ... Read more

Product Description
Gide's sexuality was explicitly central to everything he wrote, but it was complex, moved as much by undesire as desire and the fascination for crime, education, virtue, or play. Naomi Segal traces the fluidity of motivation throughout his fiction and nonfiction, through the analogy of the mechanical processes of the male body. ... Read more