"Beginning with a single entry For The year 1889, when he was twenty, and continuing intermittently but indefatigably through his life, theJournals of Andr Gideconstitute an enlightening, moving, and endlessly fascinating chronicle of creative energy and conviction. Astutely and thoroughly annotated by Justin O'Brien in consultation with Gide himself, this translation is the definitive edition of Gide's complete journals.The complete journals, representing sixty years of a varied life, testify to a disciplined intelligence in a constantly maturing thought. These pages contain aesthetic appreciations, philosophic reflections, sustained literary criticism, notes For The composition of his works, details of his personal life and spiritual conflicts, accounts of his extensive travels, and comments on the political and social events of the day, from the Dreyfus case To The German occupation. Gide records his progress as a writer and a reader as well as his contacts and conversations with the bright lights of contemporary Europe, from Paul Valry, Paul Claudel, Lon Blum, and Auguste Rodin to Marcel Proust, Stephen Mallarm, Oscar Wilde, and Nadia Boulanger. Devoid of affectation, alternately overtaken by depression and animated by a sense of urgency and hunger for literature and beauty, Gide read voraciously, corresponded voluminously, and thought profoundly, always questioning and doubting in search of the unadulterated truth. ""The only drama that really interests me and that I should always be willing to depict anew,"" he wrote, ""is the debate of the individual with whatever keeps him from being authentic, with whatever is opposed to his integrity, To his integration. Most often the obstacle is within him. And all the rest is merely accidental.""Volume 4 reveals a creative mind that remains vigorous and unique as Gide enters his seventies. He records the fall of France And The German occupation during World War II, The landing of the Americans And The fall of Tunis, As well as a memorable meeting with General de Gaulle. His literary commentary touches on such writers as Virgil, Goethe, Racine, Dashiell Hammett, and John Steinbeck."

'Ambitious, humane and absorbing . . . this book could not be better.' Spectator 'A deeply satisfying chronicle of women's lives at a time when this nation was tested as never before. Introduces you to hundreds of wonderful women - a magnificent regiment - you wish you had met in the flesh, and when you close it you feel enlarged as well as amazed by their experiences. Women were fire watchers, ARP workers, first aiders, ambulance drivers, police officers, messengers, transport, demolition and repair workers. A rich, entwined narrative, which moves in and out of the lives of an absorbing cast of characters during ten years.' Daily Mail 'A magnificent work of social history written with passion and panache.' Daily Express 'Splendid. Using diaries, autobiographies, memoirs and interviews, Nicholson charts the work, the lives, the relationships and the emotions of typists, factory workers, housewives, debutantes and artists working as nurses, in the services, in intelligence, in factories, on the land and as codebreakers. A tremendous achievement.' Observer 'A deeply moving account of female courage both at home and overseas. The joy of Nicholson's book is the way she has plaited scores of individual stories into a richly textured account of the many forms that female courage can take.' Mail on Sunday

"Beginning with a single entry for the year 1889, when he was twenty, and continuing intermittently but indefatigably through his life, theJournals of Andr Gideconstitute an enlightening, moving, and endlessly fascinating chronicle of creative energy and conviction. Astutely and thoroughly annotated by Justin O'Brien in consultation with Gide himself, this translation is the definitive edition of Gide's complete journals.The complete journals, representing sixty years of a varied life, testify to a disciplined intelligence in a constantly maturing thought. These pages contain aesthetic appreciations, philosophic reflections, sustained literary criticism, notes for the composition of his works, details of his personal life and spiritual conflicts, accounts of his extensive travels, and comments on the political and social events of the day, from the Dreyfus case to the German occupation. Gide records his progress as a writer and a reader as well as his contacts and conversations with the bright lights of contemporary Europe, from Paul Valry, Paul Claudel, Lon Blum, and Auguste Rodin to Marcel Proust, Stephen Mallarm, Oscar Wilde, and Nadia Boulanger. Devoid of affectation, alternately overtaken by depression and animated by a sense of urgency and hunger for literature and beauty, Gide read voraciously, corresponded voluminously, and thought profoundly, always questioning and doubting in search of the unadulterated truth. ""The only drama that really interests me and that I should always be willing to depict anew,"" he wrote, ""is the debate of the individual with whatever keeps him from being authentic, with whatever is opposed to his integrity, to his integration. Most often the obstacle is within him. And all the rest is merely accidental."""

In 1939, residents of a rural village near Chengdu watched as Lei Mingyuan, a member of a violent secret society known as the Gowned Brothers, executed his teenage daughter. Six years later, Shen Baoyuan, a sociology student at Yenching University, arrived in the town to conduct fieldwork on the society that once held sway over local matters. She got to know Lei Mingyuan and his family, recording many rare insights about the murder and the Gowned Brothers' inner workings. Using the filicide as a starting point to examine the history, culture, and organization of the Gowned Brothers, Di Wang offers nuanced insights into the structures of local power in 1940s rural Sichuan. Moreover, he examines the influence of Western sociology and anthropology on the way intellectuals in the Republic of China perceived rural communities. By studying the complex relationship between the Gowned Brothers and the Chinese Communist Party, he offers a unique perspective on China's transition to socialism. In so doing, Wang persuasively connects a family in a rural community, with little overt influence on national destiny, to the movements and ideologies that helped shape contemporary China.

This study investigates the place of sexuality in the writings of Andre Gide. Focusing on his writing of the 1920s and 1930s, the years in which Gide wrote most openly about his homosexuality, and also the years of his most notable left-wing political activity, the work interrogates both the political content of his reflections on his homosexuality and the ways in which his sexuality inflected his political interests.

Available for the first time in paperback, the Journals of Andr Gide are remarkable literary works in their own right--they are unfailingly honest, endlessly fascinating, and a feast for the mind, enhanced by a new introduction by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Richard Howard.