Forest of Anger

Forest of Anger, which opens in September 1942 and closes in the spring of 1943, was undoubtedly written in the following months, that is between summer and autumn or winter 1943, a few months after Gary’s return to British soil and his posting to Hartford Bridge, home of the RAF 324 Squadron, part of the “Lorraine” Group.

The manuscript — apparently lost — seems to have carried the title “La Forêt engloutie,” midway between the text published in La France Libre and the eventual title of the English edition. Its first reader was Raymond Aron, at the offices of La France Libre in London: “I read in London the manuscript of Éducation européenne by Romain Gary, to whom I promised a great literary career,” more than six months before its publication. The novel then had only 31 chapters and no epilogue, as David Bellos demonstrates (Le Malentendu, L’histoire cachée d’Éducation Européenne, Cahiers de l’Herne, 2005, pp. 150–168). He adds: “to translate the young French airman’s text in June–July 1944, the Cresset Press turned to a major figure of the London literary world: Viola Gerard Garvin, daughter of the editor of the weekly The Observer and herself for many years its literary editor, a pillar of the English liberal left. This shows the importance attached to Lieutenant Kacew’s manuscript. Moreover, Garvin was particularly well qualified, since she spoke several European languages, including Polish — an essential qualification for this first version, as we shall see…”