La mort de près

Rights sold
Germany (Leipziger Literaturverlag)

Presenation

When La Mort de près was first published in 1972, Maurice Genevoix was 81.

Nearly sixty years earlier, a young student at the École Normale Supérieure, he had fought in the first, most brutal part of World War I, which gave him the inspiration for Ceux de 14. In that time he saw hundreds of men die before him, some even in his arms. After six months of fighting Genevoix himself was seriously wounded and almost died. This short book tells us, in a simple and precise way, what he saw and felt in the moments where he watched a man’s life disappear. He depicts the agonies of the dying, every one different, individual to each man. He describes a dying soldier’s last words as they rise to his lips, and how their eyes cloud over. He makes us see the ultimate light disappearing into the depths of the pupils.

This is one of the most beautiful and heart-renching accounts of the trenches that has ever been written.

Born in the Nièvre in 1890, Maurice Genevoix left the École Normale Supérieure in August 1914 to fight in the war. He spent several months in the most unmerciful sectors of the front. Gravely injured, he describes these ordeals in Ceux de 14 which revals him to the public. He is the author of more than fifty books among which Rabiolot (Prix Goncourt, 1925), La Dernière Harde (1938), and Rroû (1931) republished by La Table Ronde in 2010.