Gros-Câlin

From March to December 1973, the same year as Europa and Les Enchanteurs, Romain Gary wrote Gros-Câlin, a novel about solitude, composing it by hand. His secretary then typed the manuscript, while Gary copied it out again in his own hand, in blue ink, into four large black accountant’s ledgers, as proof of the authenticity of his creation. This is the method he would follow for each of the novels signed Ajar. “It was only after finishing Gros-Câlin that I decided to publish the book under a pseudonym, without the publisher’s knowledge. I felt there was an incompatibility between my notoriety, the standards by which my work was judged, ‘the reputation that had been made for me,’ and the very nature of the book.”

For the first time, in under six months, a single man had published four books under four different names (François Bondy, Shatan Bogat, Romain Gary, Émile Ajar). It was in the autumn of the following year that Gary decided to give Émile Ajar a voice, and then a body, by asking his thirty-three-year-old second cousin, Paul Pavlowitch, to embody him.

This title was never translated into English.

A very fine copy of this fragile (laminated cover) and rare book.