Roger Martin du Gard and Maumort: The Nobel Laureate and His Unfinished Creation

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Roger Martin du Gard was one of the most famous writers in the Western world. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1937, and his works, especially Les Thibault, a multivolume novel, were translated into English and read widely. Today, this close friend of André Gide, Albert Camus, and André Malraux is almost unknown, largely because he left unfinished the long project he began in the 1940s, Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort. With the expert narration that distinguishes all of his books, Martin creates a blend of intellectual history, family drama, and biography.

About the Author

Benjamin Franklin Martin is the Katheryn J., Lewis C., and Benjamin Price Professor of History at Louisiana State University. He is the author of six previous books, among them, The Hypocrisy of Justice in the Belle Epoque and Years of Plenty, Years of Want: France and the Legacy of the Great War (NIU Press, 2013). He has been a consulting scholar to the Jewish Museum in New York for the celebrated exhibition "The Dreyfus Affair: Art, Truth and Justice," and a featured contributor to documentaries by The History Channel.