La Voie royale

Determined to win the Prix Goncourt with La Voie royale, Bernard Grasset launched a publicity campaign with a lengthy advertisement in Les Nouvelles Littéraires. It revealed that Malraux had envisioned a novel cycle, Les Puissances du désert, of which La Voie royale was to form the first part; the project came to nothing, but the literary reward was confirmed: a Goncourt finalist, the novel went on to win the newly created Prix Interallié.

Exoticism and metaphysics are the two poles of this violent, audacious and nihilistic novel: “adventure is the obsession with death: fleeing oneself, fleeing one’s dread of death, and running toward it.” This was a dominant and obsessive theme during the book’s gestation, one Malraux constantly discussed with his privileged interlocutor of the time, Bernard Groethuysen, the philosopher and art historian he had met on the NRF reading committee, of which Groethuysen was the most eminent member, and whose anti-dogmatism immediately won Malraux over.

A rare printing on this colored paper, in perfect condition.