Now back in print, this heartbreaking novel by Romain Gary has inspired two movies, including the Netflix feature The Life Ahead Momo has been one of the ever-changing ragbag of whores’ children at Madame Rosa’s boarding house in Paris ever since he can remember. But when the check that pays for his keep no longer arrives and as Madame Rosa becomes too ill to climb the stairs to their apartment, he determines to support her any way he can. This sensitive, slightly macabre love story between Momo and Madame Rosa has a supporting cast of transvestites, pimps, and witch doctors from Paris’s immigrant slum, Belleville. Profoundly moving, The Life Before Us won France’s premier literary prize, the Prix Goncourt.
A classic of modern French literature, the thrilling real-life story of the military hero, ambassador, ladies man, writer, and loving son "I grew up in the certitude that one day I should help give back the earth to those who ennoble it with their courage and warm it with their love." Promise at Dawn begins as the story of a mother’s sacrifice: alone and poor, she fiercely battles to give her son the very best. Romain Gary chronicles his childhood in Russia, Poland, and on the French Riviera and recounts his adventurous life as a young man fighting for France in World War II. But above all he tells the story of the love for his mother that was his life—their secret and private planet, their wonderland “born out of a mother’s murmur into a child’s ear, a promise whispered at dawn of future triumphs and greatness, of justice and love.”
The author recounts the special relationship he had with his mother and explains how he worked to achieve the many goals and accomplishments she expected of him
A NOVEL OF DESPERATE LOVE, BITTER HOPE, CHILLING COURAGE AND RELENTLESS BRAVERY “THIS quietly terrible parable for our times was first published in France fifteen years ago and was awarded the Prix de Critiques. It was translated into fourteen languages, but not into English. Since then M. Gary has won international fame with several other books. Now an entirely rewritten and, M. Gary hopes, a much improved version of A EUROPEAN EDUCATION is published in English for the first time. “A too hasty glance at A EUROPEAN EDUCATION might give the impression that no novel has ever borne a more sadly ironical title, because this is a story of innocence ‘educated’ in all the horrors and atrocities of modern war. But some of the graduates of the twentieth century’s school of despair learned something other than the subjects taught. They learned that man’s dream of freedom, of dignity and of love, is immortal; that his faith in a future without hatred cannot be destroyed.”—Orville Prescott in THE NEW YORK TIMES “A EUROPEAN EDUCATION is a story of unmitigated privation and terror. But it is also the story of the human heart’s triumph over evil even in the exercise of evil. “A EUROPEAN EDUCATION is about a group of partisans called the ‘green ones’ because they live in the forests of Poland. They hide in caves, steal food and sabotage every effort of the Germans. “Before the book ends, the hero has become a man; he has killed; he has learned how to steal without being caught, how to make friends with the Germans whom he intends to kill, and how to love. “The title is inherent in Janek’s bitter summing up of what he has learned; ‘...all this European education comes down to is to teach you how to find the courage to shoot a man who sits there with lowered head....’ “This may not be Romain Gary’s most popular book, but it is a little masterpiece and may prove to be his.”—THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Both a personal memoir and a French novelist's encounter with American reality, White Dog is an unforgettable portrait of racism and hypocrisy. Set in the tumultuous Los Angeles of 1968, Romain Gary's story begins when a German shepherd strays into his life: "He was watching me, his head cocked to one side, with that unbearable intensity of dogs in the pound waiting for a rescuer." A lost police canine, this "white dog" is programmed to respond violently to the sight of a black man and Gary's attempts to deprogram it—like his attempts to protect his wife, the actress Jean Seberg; like her endeavors to help black activists; like his need to rescue himself from the "predicament of being trapped, lock, stock and barrel within a human skin"—lead from crisis to grief. Using the re-education of this adopted pet as a metaphor for the need to quash American racism, Gary develops a domestic crisis into a full-scale social allegory.
Romain Gary’s bittersweet final masterpiece is “epic and empathetic” (BBC) and “one of his best” (The New York Times) The Kites begins with a young boy, Ludo, coming of age on a small farm in Normandy under the care of his eccentric kite-making Uncle Ambrose. Ludo’s life changes the day he meets Lila, a girl from the aristocratic Polish family that owns the estate next door. In a single glance, Ludo falls in love forever; Lila, on the other hand, disappears back into the woods. And so begins Ludo’s adventure of longing, passion, and love for the elusive Lila, who begins to reciprocate his feelings just as Europe descends into World War II. After Germany invades Poland, Lila and her family go missing, and Ludo’s devotion to saving her from the Nazis becomes a journey to save his love, his loved ones, his country, and ultimately himself. Filled with unforgettable characters who fling all they have into the fight to keep their hopes—and themselves—alive, The Kites is Romain Gary’s poetic call for resistance in whatever form it takes. A war hero himself, Gary embraced and fought for humanity in all its nuanced complexities, in the belief that a hero might be anyone who has the courage to love and hope.
Hocus Bogus first published in French as Pseudo by Mercure de France. Mercure de France, 1976. This translation David Bellos, 2010. Published by arrangement with the Estate of Romain Gary."--T.p. verso.
Il mesurait un mètre quatre-vingt-huit, était blond, et on lui avait souvent dit qu'il ressemblait à un très jeune Gary Cooper. C'était le seul gars qui lui faisait quelque chose. Il avait même une photo de lui, qu'il regardait souvent. Les gars chez Bug Moran rigolaient, ils trouveaient ça marrant. " Qu'est-ce que ça peut te foutre, Gary Cooper ? " Lenny ne répondait pas et rangeait soigneusement la photo. " Tu veux que je te dise, Lenny ? C'est fini, Gary Cooper. Fini pour toujours. Fini, l'Américain tranquille, sûr de lui et de son droit, qui est contre les méchants, toujours pour la bonne cause, et qui fait triompher la justice et gagne toujours à la fin. Adieu l'Amérique des certitudes. (...) Ciao, Gary Cooper. " Les gars se taisaient. Lenny leur tournait le dos, faisait mine de fouiller dans son sac.
All’inizio degli anni ’70, dopo una brillante e prolifica carriera, Romain Gary ormai è considerato un romanziere finito. Si parla di lui solo per segnalare che un suo cugino alla lontana, Emile Ajar, ha scritto un romanzo innovativo e sconvolgente, La vita davanti a sé, che vince il Goncourt nel ’75. Ma Gary e Ajar sono, in realtà, la medesima persona. Pseudo è il racconto di questa incredibile trasformazione. O incarnazione. Romain Gary è così stato, grazie a una volontà di mistificazione ambigua (Gary e Ajar significano rispettivamente “brucia!” e “la brace” in russo), l’unico scrittore a ottenere due volte il Premio Goncourt, la prima volta con il suo pseudonimo usuale, per Le radici del cielo nel 1956, e la seconda volta con lo pseudonimo di Émile Ajar, per La vita davanti a sé nel 1975.
Le narrateur, Fosco Zaga, est un vieillard. Hors d'âge. Deux cents ans peut-être. Chargé d'amour, il ne peut pas mourir avant qu'un autre homme aime comme il a aimé, et prenne la relève. Tout a commencé en Russie, sous le règne de la Grande Catherine, où Giuseppe Zaga, le père, exerçait ses talents de magnétiseur, alchimiste, astrologue, et surtout guérisseur de la Grande Catherine. Sa jeune femme, Teresina, moqueuse, espiègle, dont le talent naturel tranche dans cette tribu d'enchanteurs, est à peine plus âgée que Fosco. Et Fosco l'aime d'un amour infini qui l'oblige, deux siècles plus tard, deux siècles plus tard, à ressasser ses souvenirs, encore et toujours, pour empêcher Teresina de mourir réellement. Et elle ne meurt pas, comme si la plume de Fosco l'écrivain était parée de tout l'attirail d'illusionniste qu'il avait découvert, avec Teresina, dans un grenier magique de l'ancienne Russie.
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