Les Enfants gâtés
One of the copies printed for the press.
Presentation copy inscribed by Philippe Hériat to Paul Morand: “À Paul Morand, avec toute mon admiration, cette histoire d'une fille trop peu 'extravagante'. Philippe Hériat.”
With Les Enfants gâtés, Philippe Hériat turned to the family and psychological novel. The book was awarded the Prix Goncourt on 6 December 1939 by six votes on the second ballot, ahead of Robert Brasillach (Les Sept Couleurs), Madame Simone (Le Paradis Terrestre) and Julien Blanc (Toxique). Although published five years before Famille Boussardel, Les Enfants gâtés is, in the internal chronology of the series, its second volume, chronicling a decadent bourgeois family imprisoned by its thwarted ambitions and by the illusions of a generation cut off from reality.
Winner of the Prix Théophraste-Renaudot in 1931 for L’Innocent, Hériat received nearly every major literary honor: the Prix Goncourt in 1939, the Grand Prix du roman of the Académie française in 1947, and election to the Académie Goncourt in 1949, where he became secretary general after the death of Gérard Bauër.
From the “Prix Goncourt” library of Gérard Pouguet, with bookplate.