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Overview

A young man, tired of life and love, indifferent to the people and world around him, takes up a room in a Parisienne boarding house.

Noises from the adjoining room draw his attention to a hole in the wall, and he observes its occupants through it.

He becomes obsessed with the individual episodes of human life that play out before his eyes; love, adultery, incest, childbirth, death, thievery and betrayal. Through his voyeurism, the unnamed narrator becomes an omniscient godlike character, observing the room’s inhabitants in their most private and naked moments. The hole becomes a window to the very soul of humanity and the human condition.

But as with Prometheus, his godlike powers come at a cost.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781914090486
Publisher: Gothic World Literature Editions
Publication date: 09/08/2021
Sold by: Bookwire
Format: eBook
Pages: 192
File size: 637 KB

About the Author

Henri Barbusse (1873-1935) was a novelist and member of the French Communist Party. Born in Asnières-sur-Seine, he moved to Paris at 16. There, he published his first book of poems, Pleureuses (1895) and embarked on a career as a novelist and biographer. In 1914, at the age of 41, Barbusse enlisted in the French Army to serve in the First World War, for which he would earn the Croix de guerre. His novel Under Fire (1916) was inspired by his experiences in the war, which scarred him and influenced his decision to become a pacifist. In 1918, he moved to Moscow, where he joined the Bolshevik Party and married a Russian woman. Barbusse briefly returned to France, joining the French Communist Party in 1923, before moving back to Russia to work as a writer whose purpose was to support Bolshevism, illuminate the dangers of capitalism, and inspire revolutionary movements worldwide. In addition to his writing, Barbusse took part in the World Committee Against War and Fascism and the International Youth Congress, as well as worked as an editor for Monde, Progrès Civique, and L’Humanité. His final work was a biography of Joseph Stalin, which appeared in 1936 after his death from pneumonia in Moscow. Buried in Paris, his funeral was attended by a half million mourners. Among his many friends and colleagues were Egon Kisch, Albert Einstein, and Romain Rolland.

What People are Saying About This

Robert Baldick

"No one who has ever read this remarkable novel and looked at human life through Barbusse's peephole can ever forget the experience."

Jean Favrille

"It is is Barbusse, not Gide, not Proust, and not Malraux whose works marks the great turning point in French 20th-century literature."

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