Les Silences du Colonel Bramble
Only 5 deluxe-paper copies were printed for this first printing.
A liaison officer during the First World War, Émile Herzog — who had not yet adopted the pseudonym André Maurois — drew on his firsthand observations to give shape to his literary ambitions. The atmosphere of the trenches, seen through the eyes of the British — phlegmatic, and treating humor as a duty — inspired these chronicles, written in a personal and delicately ironic style.
Maurois portrayed himself under the name Aurelle, an interpreter attached to the British staff, who sketches a delightful portrait of the English ally, whose composure and philosophy in the face of horror have long charmed readers. This book, Maurois’s first literary success, permanently fixed the figure of Colonel Bramble in the French imagination as the archetype of the Englishman.
Colophon leaf slightly detached.