By François Mauriac

Unhappy that world which is burned rather than watered by  these three rivers of fire, for it is accursed. (Pascal)

“We do not know what we desire: we do not love those whom we think we love.” This musing from the lips of Mauriac’s protagonist in his masterpiece, Vipers’ Tangle, might well sum up the entirety of his fictional works, but particularly his 1922 novel The River of Fire. Daniel Trasis finds sanctuary from his troublesome Parisian mistress at a hotel in the French countryside. There he encounters the seductively innocent Gisèle de Plailly and her forbidding companion, Lucile de Villeron. Amid his budding relationship with Gisèle, Daniel is afflicted by warring obsessions with purity and lust, frustrated all the while by memories of his promiscuous past.

First published in 1923, planting the seeds of characters and themes that will come to full flower in his later works, Mauriac crafts in The River of Fire a suspenseful drama wherein the gloom of sin can yet be a “darkness in which the faithful can hear and see their Savior.”

François Mauriac (1885–1970) was a French Catholic novelist, poet, critic, and journalist. Critically acclaimed and respected, Mauriac received the Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française for his novel The Desert of Love; was awarded the Grand Cross of the Légion d’honneur; and named laureate of the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Paperback: 144pp.

ISBN: 978-1952826313