L’Ordre

A recognized critic for the Nouvelle Revue Française and a teacher of literature at Jouy-en-Josas, Marcel Arland (1899–1986) had already published five novels when he received the Prix Goncourt for L’Ordre. The novel expresses the disillusionment of the immediate postwar years: Arland portrays the fate of a young provincial who moves to Paris, crushed under the weight of convention and social order, tempted by revolt but soon brought back into line, a prisoner of mediocre ambition and bourgeois compromise.

The prize confirmed the growing hold of the NRF on the Goncourt list. The choice came at the expense of Blaise Cendrars, whose Les Confessions de Dan Yack received only a single vote.

From the “Prix Goncourt” library of Gérard Pouguet, with bookplate.