Les Civilisés
Only 5 deluxe copies were printed, on Hollande paper.
Inscribed and signed: “pour Hubert Person, en bien cordial hommage, Claude Farrère.”
A former naval officer, Claude Farrère drew on his experience of the colonial Far East for Les Civilisés, a novel steeped in exoticism, decadence and corruption. The book portrays French Indochina through intrigue, opium, rivalry and troubled sensuality, with sometimes ferocious irony. When he was awarded the Prix Goncourt, Farrère was serving aboard the battleship Saint-Louis as an ensign; he would be promoted to lieutenant the following year.
He left France in October, just after correcting the final proofs of the text (printed in Saint-Denis between April and September). His novel appeared in December, dated 1906, just in time for copies to reach the Goncourt jurors, who were captivated by this exotic epic and its anti-colonialist indictment. They removed Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe from the list in favor of Les Civilisés, “a novel of a strange make, [which] justifies the rare value of the choice the Ten have just made” (Le Temps, 9 December 1905).
A fine copy in wrappers, a rare condition for a first printing, from the Goncourt library of Hubert Person, and subsequently from that of Gérard Pouguet (bookplate).