From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Roger Martin du Gard (23
March 1881 - 22 August 1958) was a French author and winner of the 1937 Nobel
Prize for Literature. Trained as a paleographer and archivist, Martin du
Gard brought to his works a spirit of objectivity and a scrupulous regard for
details. For his concern with documentation and with the relationship of
social reality to individual development, he has been linked with the realist and naturalist traditions
of the 19th century. His major work was Les
Thibault, a roman fleuve about
the Thibault family, originally published as a series of eight novels. The
story follows the fortunes of the two Thibault brothers, Antoine and Jacques,
from their prosperous bourgeois upbringing, through the First
World War, to their deaths. He also wrote a novel, Jean
Barois, set in the historical context of the Dreyfus
Affair.
During the Second World war he resided in Nice,
where he prepared a novel, which remained unfinished (Souvenirs du
lieutenant-colonel de Maumort); an English-language translation of this
unfinished novel was published in 2000.
Roger Martin du Gard died in 1958 and was buried in the Cimiez Monastery
Cemetery in Cimiez,
a suburb of the city of Nice,
France.