La Flamme au poing

Published in 1917, La Flamme au poing earned Henry Malherbe the Prix Goncourt, a year after Barbusse’s Le Feu and Adrien Bertrand’s L’Appel du sol had received the same distinction. The text, drawn from Malherbe’s experience at the front, is representative of the wave of prize-winning war novels published during the conflict — a current to which Genevoix’s own work fully belongs.

This provenance is all the more notable given that Malherbe became, in 1919, the first president of the Association des écrivains combattants, founded a few months after the armistice. He notably coordinated the Anthologie des écrivains morts à la guerre, published in five volumes and cataloguing the military and literary careers of 562 authors killed in action.

Genevoix’s interest in this book also carries symbolic weight: in 1917, La Flamme au poing won the prize that Sous Verdun might well have received the previous year. Literary fate would reunite them in 1925, when Raboliot finally won Genevoix the Prix Goncourt.