Les Civilisés
First printing, without statement.
Only 5 deluxe-paper copies were printed, on Hollande paper.
Signed presentation inscription: “Au capitaine de Brémond d'Ars, l'auteur envoie ce livre, en souvenir d'une amitié qui lui est chère, Claude Farrère.”
A former naval officer, Claude Farrère drew on his experience of the colonial Far East for Les Civilisés, a novel steeped in exoticism, decadence and corruption. The book portrays French Indochina through intrigue, opium, rivalry and troubling sensuality, with a sometimes ferocious irony.
When he was awarded the Prix Goncourt, Farrère was aboard the Saint-Louis, the battleship on which he served as an ensign — he would be promoted to lieutenant the following year. He had left France in October, just after correcting the final proofs of the text (corrected from the Saint-Denis printworks between April and September), the book appearing in December but bearing the date 1906. This was just in time for copies to reach the Goncourt jury, who were captivated by this exotic epic and anti-colonialist indictment. They dropped Romain Rolland’s Jean-Christophe from the list in favor of Les Civilisés, “a novel of a strange kind, [which] justifies by its rare value the choice the Ten have just made” (Le Temps, 9 December 1905).
A precious copy enriched with a presentation inscription from the author to Captain François de Brémond d’Ars (1867–1914), a cavalry officer, military attaché in Athens with the rank of captain, who became squadron leader of the 14th Hussars in 1908 and died for France at Éthe on 22 August 1914.
From the “Prix Goncourt” library of Gérard Pouguet, with bookplate.