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The Wicker Work Woman book cover
The Wicker Work Woman
A Chronicle of Our Own Times
1897
First Published
3.36
Average Rating
268
Number of Pages

Part of Series

M. Bergeret's private life is turned upside down, when he discovers that his wife deceived him with his best pupil, M. Roux. He then decides he will no longer talk to his wife. He subjects her to this slow but effective moral torture, and it bears fruit: by the end of the novel, she decides to leave the marital home. M. Bergeret, however, suffers too, chiefly his pride. He seeks consolation in books and ideas, and this has consequences for his thoughts and conversation. He makes bitter remarks about life, which he sees as one long agony, and on his contemporaries, which he compares with chimpanzees.
Avg Rating
3.36
Number of Ratings
70
5 STARS
17%
4 STARS
26%
3 STARS
39%
2 STARS
13%
1 STARS
6%
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Author

Anatole France
Anatole France
Author · 29 books

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921 "in recognition of his brilliant literary achievements, characterized as they are by a nobility of style, a profound human sympathy, grace, and a true Gallic temperament." Anatole France began his career as a poet and a journalist. In 1869, Le Parnasse Contemporain published one of his poems, La Part de Madeleine. In 1875, he sat on the committee which was in charge of the third Parnasse Contemporain compilation. He moved Paul Verlaine and Mallarmé aside of this Parnasse. As a journalist, from 1867, he wrote a lot of articles and notices. He became famous with the novel Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard (1881). Its protagonist, skeptical old scholar Sylvester Bonnard, embodied France's own personality. The novel was praised for its elegant prose and won him a prize from the French Academy. In La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque (1893) Anatole France ridiculed belief in the occult; and in Les Opinions de Jerome Coignard (1893), France captured the atmosphere of the fin de siècle. He was elected to the Académie française in 1896. France took an important part in the Dreyfus Affair. He signed Emile Zola's manifesto supporting Dreyfus, a Jewish army officer who had been falsely convicted of espionage. France wrote about the affair in his 1901 novel Monsieur Bergeret. France's later works include L'Île des Pingouins (1908) which satirizes human nature by depicting the transformation of penguins into humans - after the animals have been baptized in error by the nearsighted Abbot Mael. La Revolte des Anges (1914) is often considered France's most profound novel. It tells the story of Arcade, the guardian angel of Maurice d'Esparvieu. Arcade falls in love, joins the revolutionary movement of angels, and towards the end realizes that the overthrow of God is meaningless unless "in ourselves and in ourselves alone we attack and destroy Ialdabaoth." He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1921. He died in 1924 and is buried in the Neuilly-sur-Seine community cemetery near Paris. In 1922, France's entire works were put on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Prohibited Books Index) of the Roman Catholic Church.[2:] This Index was abolished in 1966.

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