The Counterfeiters
The Counterfeiters (1926) stands out with its experimental form and structure of a meta-novel. The work stands out among André Gide's entire oeuvre not only for its genre specificity and techniques, but also for its scope and scale, and is considered the first "novel about the novel" in French literature. Written during the interwar period in France, the book problematizes bourgeois norms, reflecting changing moral values. Gide paints a perceptive, finely layered portrait of a group of young French people who are constantly in a state of analysis and self-observation. The Counterfeiters traces the dynamics of the emotions and psychological states of these interconnected characters, mostly young men, who experience personal crises and moral dilemmas in their quest to build their own identities.
This edition of the book includes an exclusive illustration by Theodore Ushev, and the artwork is by Ivo Rafailov.
Andre Gide
André Paul Guillaume Gide (1869–1951) was a writer and humanist, author of plays, novels, essays, travelogues, autobiographical books, and poetry collections, literary critic, and translator of Whitman, Shakespeare, Conrad, and Rilke into French. In 1947, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for his "comprehensive and artistically significant texts, in which the problems and situation of man are presented with fearless love of truth and sharp psychological insight."
In the early 1900s, André Gide was widely known as a literary critic, and in 1908 he was one of the founders of La Nouvelle Revue Française, a literary magazine that brought together progressive French writers until World War II. Until the 1920s, Gide was known mainly in avant-garde literary circles, but then became a highly influential, albeit controversial, figure.
