Un mort tout neuf
Paris, Éditions de la Nrf, (January 12) 1934.
1 vol. (130 x 195 mm) of 256 p. and 1 f. In wrappers.
First edition.
One of 31 copies from the first, réimposé issue on vergé Lafuma paper (no. XIV).
Signed presentation inscription: “J'ai été heureux de cette soirée que nous avions passée ensemble, Armand Movschovitz nous en passerons une autre ici puisque vous avez bien voulu prendre un de ces livres… Croyez à ma sympathie, E. Dabit, février 1934.”
One of 31 copies from the first, réimposé issue on vergé Lafuma paper (no. XIV).
Signed presentation inscription: “J'ai été heureux de cette soirée que nous avions passée ensemble, Armand Movschovitz nous en passerons une autre ici puisque vous avez bien voulu prendre un de ces livres… Croyez à ma sympathie, E. Dabit, février 1934.”
Long reduced, in common memory, to Hôtel du Nord alone and even more to its film adaptation, Eugène Dabit deserves to be read for his other books as well. Published two years before his premature death, in 1936, on his return from the trip to the U.S.S.R. with Gide, Un mort tout neuf, set in the working-class and lower-middle-class Paris he knew so well, takes as its subject almost nothing at all: four days, between a sudden death and a burial. Within this narrow frame, “his parents, his friends, his mistress, the letters, the furniture, his money, the memories he leaves behind, bring him back to life. We never see him, we never hear him. The book begins with his death, and ends with his burial, on the fourth day.”
A fine copy.
#22183
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