Éducation européenne

This edition is far from a minor variant: no other text by Gary was ever revised, corrected and altered as much as his first novel, evidence of the great importance he attached to it. This 1961 edition presents two additional chapters (33 instead of 31), plus an epilogue, as well as documents supplied by the “Bureau d’informations polonaises,” reproduced at the end. The book’s “first title” (La Forêt engloutie) also reappears in these additions, when Gary opens his chapter 33 (written around 1960) with these very words; it is worth noting that the same phrase is taken up word for word in Les Cerfs-volants (Folio ed. 1467, p. 126), as the title of a poem by the (obviously fictional) Polish author named… Walden, whom one could hardly leave unmentioned!