Les hommes de bonne volonté. Tome 16 : Verdun
by Jules Romains
Les hommes de bonne volonté (16 sur 27)
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I was engaged with Romains' long series of novels "Men of Good Will" for several years. This was my ninth volume counting backwards. It is in the running for "The world's Longest Novel" and is ambitious. We have come to WWI, and as a great many of the French survivors had to do, we come to the terrible battle that lasted a year and a half, and killed a very large number of soldiers of both sides. Some of the main characters survive it, and some do not. As the original publication date was 1938, it seems quite prophetic of what was to come. The translation is quite able.
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Romains first appeared in English as a medical researcher, with his scientific work Eyeless Sight: A Study of Extra-Retinal Vision and the Paroptic Sense (1923). His first novel, The Death of a Nobody (1911), is still considered by many his masterpiece. The serial novel Men of Good Will begins in 1933, with its political unrest recalling the sixth show more of October 1908, six years before World War I, the day on which the first volume opens. The narrative combines imaginary events with historical, and fictitious characters with actual. This epic novel, with its vast canvas and mass of characters, is an expression of the author's "unanimist" conception of life, a theory that defines society through the individual's relation to masses or groups and contends that a group of people with a unanimous emotion (such as goodwill) can develop a mass power superior to any other force. Romains was international president of PEN from 1938 to 1941 and was elected to the French Academy in 1946. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Canonical title
- Les hommes de bonne volonté. Tome 16 : Verdun
- Original title
- Verdun
- Original publication date
- 1938 (1e édition originale française ∙ Flammarion) (1e édition originale française ∙ Flammarion)
- Important places*
- Verdun, Meuse, Grand-Est, France
- Original language*
- Français
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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