By François Mauriac 

“She was a hypocrite, pretending that people had been sent into the world to understand, when in fact to love  was the whole purpose of their being.”

What Was Lost sets the stage for François Mauriac’s much-acclaimed later novel The Dark Angels. Against the backdrop of the disintegrating marriage of the duplicitous Hervé and the ailing Irène, Alain Forcas and his sister, Tota, confront dysfunctional family dynamics, frustrated careers, and the persistent, anxious search for the presence of God in the modern world—striving after meaning and happiness even amidst their incessant vying against one another in selfishness and deceit.

First published in 1930, What Was Lost marks an early, excellent effort, one fraught with tension and melancholy, of the Nobel Prize-winning Mauriac to bring his artistic philosophy to life in fiction.

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: 162pp.

ISBN: 978-1949899566