Le Rivage des Syrtes

Le Rivage des Syrtes, published three months after this pre-publication extract — in September 1951 — brought Julien Gracq to wide public attention: through the Prix Goncourt, which immediately signaled the novel’s importance, and through Gracq’s now-famous refusal of the prize, a rejection of media excess that he confirmed through his lasting withdrawal from public life.

A novel of waiting, borders and decline, Le Rivage des Syrtes unfolds a sumptuous prose style and a metaphor of a world awaiting its own end. In 1982, when the novel was set for the agrégation examination, Gracq became the first living author to be so honored. He is said to have remarked, in a now-celebrated line, “But only the dead are set for the syllabus!” Léopold Sédar Senghor in 1987, Eugène Ionesco in 1992, Claude Simon in 1998 and Philippe Jaccottet in 2004 received the same honor. Uniquely, Gracq was to appear a second time, in 2008, with Un balcon en forêt and La Presqu’île.

From the “Prix Goncourt” library of Gérard Pouguet, with bookplate.