About the book: 1993 / "The Immoralist" - a story written by Andre Gide in 1902, opened a new stage in his work. His previous writings: "Les cahiers d'Andre Walter", "Le Voyage d'Urien", "Paludes" and especially "Les nourritures terrestres", represented lyrical outpourings of the soul, all childhood and youth forced by Puritan upbringing to suppress their desires, but finally freed and uncontrollably, like a bird, surrendering to the joy of life. In theme and mood, “The Immoralist” is close to these early works, but in form it differs significantly from them: Gide decided, as it were, to curb his talent, to subordinate it to the iron discipline of the will; he managed to create his own special narrative genre. The story “The Immoralist” conveys, of course, pre-war sentiments, and Gide was able to express them with such poignancy, such reverence that he immediately gained sympathy among the most sensitive youth of that time. Already at that moment his literary position was determined - by young people, or rather the “elite” from among French youth, he was recognized as perhaps the largest writer of modern France, while the “traditional” French literary environment, the academy, almost ignored him.