"My novel hasn't got a subject. Yes, I know it sounds stupid...let's say, if you prefer it, it hasn't got one subject...and the subject of the book, if you must have one, is just that the very struggle between what reality offers him and what he himself desires to make of it."
In a novel about a novelist writing a novel that mirrors the novel he is in, what is the reality of the story? The Counterfeiters, written by Nobel Prize winner, Andre Gide, is an impressively layered and experimental book that follows the story of douard X., an aspiring author and his surrounding schoolmates at the Pension Azas, some of whom are involved in a counterfeiting ring. Observing their actions and motivations, douard begins to question the value of a counterfeit: what differentiates the real and fake, where the line of authentic reality lies, and how the very idea of counterfeiting transcends the physical coin itself and applies to those who produce them.
Featuring both The Counterfeiters and The Journal of the Counterfeiters, this edition of Andre Gide's self-proclaimed, "first novel," is a classic of French literature reimagined for modern readers.
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With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.
About the Author :
Andre Gide (1869 - 1951) was a French author described by The New York Times as, "French's greatest contemporary man of letters." Gide was a prolific writer with over fifty books published in his sixty-year career with his notable books including The Notebooks of Andre Walker (1891), The Immoralist (1902), The Pastoral Symphony (1919), The Counterfeiters (1925) and The Journals of Andre Gide (1950). He was also known for his openness surrounding his sexuality: a self-proclaimed pederast, Gide espoused the philosophy of completely owning one's sexual nature without compromising one's personal values which is made evident in almost all of his autobiographical works. At a time when it was not common for authors to openly address homosexual themes or include homosexual characters, Gide strove to challenge convention and portray his life, and the life of gay people, as authentically as possible.
