L’Araigne
One of 460 copies on alfa paper (no. 45).
Signed presentation inscription: “Pour Madame Jean Calizi, en sympathique hommage, l'histoire de cette défaite devant la vie quotidienne. Henri Troyat.”
At only twenty-seven, Henri Troyat (Lev Aslanovitch Tarassov, 1911–2007) achieved sudden fame with this psychological novel, in which Gérard Fonsèque, a young man pathologically attached to his sisters, descends into madness as they gain their independence. L’Araigne explores the tyranny of family bonds, the vertigo of emotional dependency and the mind’s distortions under the grip of obsession.
On 7 December 1938, after five rounds of voting, the novel won the Prix Goncourt by five votes to five over Brune by François de Roux, the president J.-H. Rosny aîné’s deciding double vote tipping the balance in Troyat’s favor. The award also marked a turning point for the publisher Plon, less often represented among the winners than Gallimard, Grasset or Albin Michel: it had won the prize only once before, in 1907. For Troyat, it launched an exceptional career, crowned in 1959 by his election to the Académie française and by an immense body of novels and biographies.
From the library of Calizi (bookplate); from the “Prix Goncourt” library of Gérard Pouguet, with bookplate.