La Maison Du Peuple suivi de Compagnons

by Louis Guilloux

Un peu avant la guerre de 1914 - 1918, à Saint-Brieuc, un cordonnier essaie de créer dans la ville une section socialiste, puis, n'étant pas arrivé à convaincre les habitants, entreprend de construire de ses mains une « maison du peuple ». Son fils - encore un enfant - assiste à ses efforts désespérés pour donner un espoir au peuple.
L'art de Guilloux, pudique et tendre, est déjà tout entier dans ce premier roman qui annonce une des oeuvres majeures de son temps. Loin d'être un simple roman à thèse, La Maison du peuple est en réalité un hymne à la tendresse humaine. Il est suivi d'un texte bref, Compagnons, qui raconte la mort d'un ouvrier. Sur un thème désespéré, Guilloux évite tout mélodrame et son histoire gagne une dignité émouvante.
Le livre est préfacé par Albert Camus, qui écrit : « Je défie qu'on lise ce récit sans le terminer la gorge serrée. »

216 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

About the author

Louis Guilloux was a French known for his Social Realist novels describing working class life and political struggles in the mid-twentieth century. His best-known book is Le Sang noir (Black Blood), which has been described as a "prefiguration of Sartre's La Nausée."

Before becoming a professional writer, literary translator and interpreter, Guilloux worked in various trades, including journalism. He was well known for his fluency in the English language. He married in 1924, and published La Maison du Peuple in 1927.

The success of the book led to a long series of novels on socially committed themes, usually based in his native Brittany. His masterpiece Le Sang Noir was notable for its departure from his earlier, more staightforwardly socialist literature, since it contains elements of what was later associated with an existentialist or absurdist vision. It centres on the suicidal thoughts of the anti-hero, Cripure, who feels overwhelming disgust at humanity in the destructive circumstances of militarism during World War I.

Contrasted with the figure of Cripure is the nominal hero, Lucien, who aspires to work for a better future. But the grotesque and self-excoriating visions of Cripure are repeatedly portrayed as more powerful and compelling than Lucien's idealism. The book was translated into English under the title Bitter Victory.

Le Pain des Rêves (Bread of Dreams), which he wrote during the Occupation, won the Prix du roman populiste in 1942. After the liberation of France, Guilloux worked as an interpreter for the American Army of occupation. In "OK Joe!" he explored racial inequalities and injustice in the segregated American army of the time. Guilloux's experiences at this time are described by Alice Kaplan in her 2006 book The Interpreter.

His 1949 novel Le Jeu de Patience (Game of Patience) won the Prix Renaudot. It has been described as his most experimental work, "an intricate text demanding patient reconstitution by the reader. Micro- and macro-history collide: the horrors of war, and anarchist and Popular Front politics or right-wing coups, impinge violently on private dramas. It is a haunted kaleidoscope, often hallucinatory."

Guilloux was also a translator of a number of books, including the novel 'Home to Harlem' written by black American author Claude McKay, published in 1932 under the title Ghetto Noir. He also translated John Steinbeck, Margaret Kennedy, and Robert Didier, and some of the Hornblower series of novels by C.S. Forester. Towards the end of his life he created scripts for television adaptations of literary classics.

Louis Guilloux was friendly with many notable writers. He knew the philosopher Jean Grenier from his teenage years, and was close to Albert Camus. He was also friends with André Malraux and Jean Guéhenno. Camus praised his work highly, and compared his story Compagnons (Companions) to Leo Tolstoy's 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich.'

Reviews

[Persephone Abbott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author Louis Guilloux was admired by Albert Camus. Guilloux’s style of writing in “La Maison du Peuple” depicts a type of nonsensical time use, the Sisyphus time of the working impoverished man, in this case the shoe maker and father of the family. There is no final achievement for the family, no thought of buying their own house, educating their children, taking a vacation there is only the day to day grind of putting food on the table. Except, and this is the exception, the ideal that the rise of socialism will better the lives of working class French citizens. This is the dream that those early socialists held to their eyes. The author sets his story in his native Brittany and essentially it is about his own father’s hope. Guilloux’s book is easy to read granted that the general conditions of the poverty and hopelessness of vast majorities of people is understandable for the modern reader who may take many for granted the privileges that Guilloux’s family fought for in the early 19th century. The introduction of beginning of the First World War at the very end is presented in a way that makes the event not central to the historical movement of the socialist party and uses the murder of Jaures as the catapult to chaos. The socialist Jean Jaures was, by the by, an antimilitarist who was assassinated in 1914 just before the outbreak of the war mere days before he was to argue against the rising of belligerent tensions between France and Germany. The second story ‘Compagnons” is about the return of the men from the war.

[coralie · Rating 5 out of 5]

ce qui m’a permis d’avoir mon bac de français… merci

[enorab04 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parce que la lutte et la conscience de classe c’est trop important

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

داستان بلند "خانه ی مردم" توسط هادی جامعی به فارسی ترجمه شده و چاپ اول آن توسط کتاب نمونه در سال 1352 و چاپ دوم آن در 1353 توسط انتشارات بهرنگ چاپ و منتشر شده است.