The Thibaults

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Amazon:This is one of the best pieces of classic literature ever written. It is not quite clear why hardly anyone has ever heard about in the United States. The novel, by Nobel Prize winning du Gard, is revered in Europe. It is not to be missed by any serious reader. Beware, though, that this is not the complete work. The English translation is divided in two volumes. This one, The Thibaults, is followed by Summer 1914. And since it is the same opus, one really should read both. Description:In 1937, French author Roger Martin du Gard was awarded the Literature Nobel Prize for "The Thibaults." Written between 1922 and 1929, this 800-page chronicle of a Parisian family is a rewarding work for readers interested primarily in psychological motivations of complex, life-like characters.The book consists of six novels of varying length, although reading the novels out of sequence may result in a lack of overall clarity. The setting of the first novel is 1898, while the last novel concludes in 1913. The panaoramic novels of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were the main literary influences on du Gard's writings. Like those famous Russian authors, du Gard applied objectivity to produce incorruptible realism.Roger Martin Du Gard's masterpiece, LES THIBAULT and SUMMER 1914 were published between 1922 and 1940. The novels follow two bourgeois families, one Catholic and the other Protestant, and depict the degeneration of society prior WW I. The principal characters are Jacques Thibaut, a socialist revolutionary, and his brother Antoine, a Cartesian doctor who seeks change through evolution. Jacques and Antoine are opposing personalities – when one is restless the other is calm – and the first two volumes of the series focus on their conflict. Both fail to see the signs of the approaching war. Jacques distributes pacifist pamphlets by air, his plane crashes and he is accidentally shot as a spy. Antoine is caught by a gas attack. His health rapidly deteriorates but he keeps a diary recording his thoughts and finally commits suicide.