'He's the one great epic novelist of the revolution to come that never came.' 'All of a sudden, after the war, his novels seemed to me to have no literary value whatsoever,' 'I find them naff.' 'In L'Espoir he is immersed in the action and that makes his art great,' 'He was a fake: he always pretended to be what he was not.' 'He was in love with danger, with adventure,' 'He was one of the most religious men I ever met.' 'He was always speaking about fraternity, about the masses, but no - he was an aristocrat: he was deeply an aristocrat, a man of the élite.' 'I think probably from his childhood, which he hated, he had to forge a sort of mask. He needed that.'

LRB 25 June 1992 | PDF Download