Léon Morin prêtre

A rare printing intended for members of the Académie, the publisher and the author’s friends.

This bold novel established Beck’s reputation: a young Communist widow, Barny, meets Léon Morin, a priest in a provincial village under the Occupation. Between them develops an intellectual and spiritual dialogue, at once intense and ambiguous, mingling desire, conversion and ideological confrontation.

The vote was unequivocal: Léon Morin, prêtre won on the first ballot, against Pierre Boulle’s Le Pont de la rivière Kwaï, Antoine Blondin’s Les Enfants du bon Dieu (which received the loyal vote of Roland Dorgelès), and Georges Arnaud’s Le Salaire de la peur. French-speaking Belgium had reason to celebrate having outdone this trio, all the more so since, besides Beck, the Ixelles-born Dominique Rolin won the Prix Femina the same year.