Les Portes de la forêt
One of 10 copies on vélin neige, this copy hors commerce (h.c. 2).
Signed presentation inscription: “Pour Jean Bardet, avec amitié profonde. Elie W. Septembre 1964.”
Most of Elie Wiesel’s novels, essays and documentary writings — all composed in French — bear witness to, and in a sense put on trial, a God who, in his view, allowed the most horrifying and senseless event in human history to take place. His first novel, La Nuit, prefaced by François Mauriac, told the story of a young boy in a death camp. Four years later, Les Portes de la forêt again examines man’s relationship with God during the genocide perpetrated by the Nazis: this intense and somber story of survival draws us into the inner world of a survivor haunted by ghosts, in a dialogue not unlike that of En attendant Godot, but even more tragic.
A fine copy of distinguished provenance: Jean Bardet co-founded Éditions du Seuil with Paul Flamand.