Francois Mauriac - Nobel Prize in Literature, 1952 (23 books)

FRANÇOIS MAURIAC (1885-1970) was a French novelist, dramatist, critic, poet, journalist, and member of the Académie française. He won the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life", and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d'honneur in 1958.

Mauriac belonged to the lineage of French Catholic writers who examined the ugly realities of modern life in the light of eternity. His novels are imbued with his profound, though nonconformist, Roman Catholicism. They are sombre, austere psychological dramas set in an atmosphere of unrelieved tension. At the heart of every work Mauriac placed a religious soul grappling with the problems of sin, grace, and salvation.

His native city of Bordeaux and the drab and suffocating strictures of bourgeois life generally provide the framework for his explorations of the relations of characters deprived of love. A KISS FOR THE LEPER (1922) established Mauriac as a major novelist. He showed increasing mastery in THE DESERT OF LOVE (1925) and in THÉRÈSE DESQUEYROUX (1927), whose heroine is driven to attempt the murder of her husband to escape her suffocating life. VIPERS' TANGLE (1932), often considered Mauriac's masterpiece, is a marital drama depicting an old lawyer's rancour toward his family, his passion for money, and his final conversion. In this, as in other Mauriac novels, the love that his characters seek vainly in human contacts is fulfilled only in love of God.

Mauriac was also a prominent polemical writer. He intervened vigorously in the 1930s, condemning totalitarianism in all its forms and denouncing Fascism in Italy and Spain. During World War II, Mauriac's vociferous criticism of the Nazis forced him to go into hiding. He later became a staunch supporter of Charles de Gaulle, about whom he wrote a biography in 1964.

Last but not least, several confessional works on themes related to Catholic temperament and theology are also included here. His LIFE OF JESUS (1936) was clearly an important step in his own spiritual development. Among important later prose works of Christian reflection and apologetics are WORDS OF FAITH (1954), THE SON OF MAN (1960), and WHAT I BELIEVE (1962).


The following books are in PDF format unless otherwise noted:

Fiction

* The Desert of Love / The Enemy (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1949). Translated by Gerald Hopkins.

* Flesh and Blood (Dell, 1961). Translated by Gerald Hopkins. (Scan courtesy of @pharmakate)

* The Holy Terror (Funk & Wagnalls, 1967). Translated by Anne Carter.

* Kiss for the Leper / Genetrix (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1950). Translated by Gerald Hopkins.

* The Little Misery (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1952). Translated by Gerald Hopkins.

* Questions of Precedence (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1958). Translated by Gerald Hopkins.

* The River of Fire (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1954). Translated by Gerald Hopkins.

* That Which Was Lost / The Dark Angels (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1951). Translated by Gerald Hopkins.

* Thérèse (Penguin, 1975). Translated by Gerald Hopkins.

* Thérèse Desqueyroux (Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). Translated by Raymond MacKenzie -- ePUB

* The Unknown Sea (Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1948). Translated by Gerald Hopkins.

* Vipers' Tangle (Doubleday, 1957). Translated by Warre B. Wells.

* Woman of the Pharisees (Noonday, 1964). Translated by Gerald Hopkins.

Non-fiction

* The Art of Fiction, no. 2 (Paris Review, Summer 1953). Interview by Jean Le Marchand.

* De Gaulle (Doubleday, 1966). Translated by Richard Howard.

* Holy Thursday: An Intimate Remembrance (Sophia Institute, 1991). With a prefatory meditation by Mother Teresa of Calcutta.

* Life of Jesus (Hodder & Stoughton, 1937). Translated by Julie Kernan.

* The Living Thoughts of Pascal (Cassell, 1946). Edited with an Introduction by François Mauriac.

* Nobel Acceptance Speech (Nobel Library, 1971).

* Proust's Way (Philosophical Library, 1950; rep. Open Road, 2014) -- ePUB

* The Son of Man (World Publishing, 1960). Translated by Bernard Murchland.

* What I Believe (Farrar Straus, 1963). Translated by Wallace Fowlie.

* Words of Faith (Philosophical Library, 1955). Translated by Rev. Edward H. Flannery. (Contains Nobel banquet speech)

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