Les Jeux sauvages
One of 43 copies on vélin pur fil (no. 21).
Mounted at front: 3 photographic prints captioned on the verso, showing the author outside his house in Sens.
Born in 1920, Paul Colin was awarded the prize at the age of thirty for this, his first novel, Les Jeux sauvages.
In a France still marked by the war, this radically dark novel struck readers with its stripped-down style and psychological brutality. Yet the choice was controversial: two clear favorites had emerged, André Dhôtel and Marguerite Duras, with her Un Barrage contre le Pacifique. “It was so close that on the fifth round the winner was someone whom absolutely no one had thought of as a possible Goncourt candidate — not even Philippe Hériat, who threw out the name just to see, hoping it might unblock the deadlock: Paul Colin, author of Jeux sauvages. Who?” (Pierre Assouline, Du côté de chez Drouant).
The impact was immediate but remained controversial. A rumor soon spread in Paris that the 1950 Goncourt had been a commercial failure. To put an end to it, Gaston Gallimard had bailiffs certify the print runs at Brodard et Taupin, Grévin and the Imprimerie moderne, and in February 1951 had two striking pages published in the Bibliographie de la France: on one side the bailiffs’ official reports, on the other, in massive type, the statement “122,500 copies, print run certified by bailiff.” The rumor died down at once, but the confusion between “printed” and “sold” was never fully dispelled.
The prize nonetheless secured Paul Colin a place in literary history, even though his later career never fulfilled the promise of this first novel — and long remained a source of regret for Marguerite Duras.
A fine copy.