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The Colours of the Day
English, French (translation)
271 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1952
36 people want to read
About the author
Romain Gary
173 books1,948 followersRomain Gary was a Jewish-French novelist, film director, World War II aviator and diplomat. He also wrote under the pen name
Émile Ajar
.
Born Roman Kacew (Yiddish: קצב, Russian: Кацев), Romain Gary grew up in Vilnius to a family of Lithuanian Jews. He changed his name to Romain Gary when he escaped occupied France to fight with Great Britain against Germany in WWII. His father, Arieh-Leib Kacew, abandoned his family in 1925 and remarried. From this time Gary was raised by his mother, Nina Owczinski. When he was fourteen, he and his mother moved to Nice, France. In his books and interviews, he presented many different versions of his father's origin, parents, occupation and childhood.
He later studied law, first in Aix-en-Provence and then in Paris. He learned to pilot an aircraft in the French Air Force in Salon-de-Provence and in Avord Air Base, near Bourges. Following the Nazi occupation of France in World War II, he fled to England and under Charles de Gaulle served with the Free French Forces in Europe and North Africa. As a pilot, he took part in over 25 successful offensives logging over 65 hours of air time.
He was greatly decorated for his bravery in the war, receiving many medals and honors.
After the war, he worked in the French diplomatic service and in 1945 published his first novel. He would become one of France's most popular and prolific writers, authoring more than thirty novels, essays and memoirs, some of which he wrote under the pseudonym of Émile Ajar. He also wrote one novel under the pseudonym of Fosco Sinibaldi and another as Shatan Bogat.
In 1952, he became secretary of the French Delegation to the United Nations in New York, and later in London (in 1955).
In 1956, he became Consul General of France in Los Angeles.
He is the only person to win the Prix Goncourt twice. This prize for French language literature is awarded only once to an author. Gary, who had already received the prize in 1956 for Les racines du ciel , published La vie devant soi under the pseudonym of Émile Ajar in 1975. The Académie Goncourt awarded the prize to the author of this book without knowing his real identity. A period of literary intrigue followed. Gary's little cousin Paul Pavlowitch posed as the author for a time. Gary later revealed the truth in his posthumous book Vie et mort d'Émile Ajar .
Gary's first wife was the British writer, journalist, and Vogue editor Lesley Blanch (author of The Wilder Shores of Love ). They married in 1944 and divorced in 1961. From 1962 to 1970, Gary was married to the American actress Jean Seberg, with whom he had a son, Alexandre Diego Gary.
He also co-wrote the screenplay for the motion picture, The Longest Day and co-wrote and directed the 1971 film Kill! , starring his now ex-wife Seberg.
Suffering from depression after Seberg's 1979 suicide, Gary died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on December 2, 1980 in Paris, France though he left a note which said specifically that his death had no relation with Seberg's suicide.
Born Roman Kacew (Yiddish: קצב, Russian: Кацев), Romain Gary grew up in Vilnius to a family of Lithuanian Jews. He changed his name to Romain Gary when he escaped occupied France to fight with Great Britain against Germany in WWII. His father, Arieh-Leib Kacew, abandoned his family in 1925 and remarried. From this time Gary was raised by his mother, Nina Owczinski. When he was fourteen, he and his mother moved to Nice, France. In his books and interviews, he presented many different versions of his father's origin, parents, occupation and childhood.
He later studied law, first in Aix-en-Provence and then in Paris. He learned to pilot an aircraft in the French Air Force in Salon-de-Provence and in Avord Air Base, near Bourges. Following the Nazi occupation of France in World War II, he fled to England and under Charles de Gaulle served with the Free French Forces in Europe and North Africa. As a pilot, he took part in over 25 successful offensives logging over 65 hours of air time.
He was greatly decorated for his bravery in the war, receiving many medals and honors.
After the war, he worked in the French diplomatic service and in 1945 published his first novel. He would become one of France's most popular and prolific writers, authoring more than thirty novels, essays and memoirs, some of which he wrote under the pseudonym of Émile Ajar. He also wrote one novel under the pseudonym of Fosco Sinibaldi and another as Shatan Bogat.
In 1952, he became secretary of the French Delegation to the United Nations in New York, and later in London (in 1955).
In 1956, he became Consul General of France in Los Angeles.
He is the only person to win the Prix Goncourt twice. This prize for French language literature is awarded only once to an author. Gary, who had already received the prize in 1956 for Les racines du ciel , published La vie devant soi under the pseudonym of Émile Ajar in 1975. The Académie Goncourt awarded the prize to the author of this book without knowing his real identity. A period of literary intrigue followed. Gary's little cousin Paul Pavlowitch posed as the author for a time. Gary later revealed the truth in his posthumous book Vie et mort d'Émile Ajar .
Gary's first wife was the British writer, journalist, and Vogue editor Lesley Blanch (author of The Wilder Shores of Love ). They married in 1944 and divorced in 1961. From 1962 to 1970, Gary was married to the American actress Jean Seberg, with whom he had a son, Alexandre Diego Gary.
He also co-wrote the screenplay for the motion picture, The Longest Day and co-wrote and directed the 1971 film Kill! , starring his now ex-wife Seberg.
Suffering from depression after Seberg's 1979 suicide, Gary died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on December 2, 1980 in Paris, France though he left a note which said specifically that his death had no relation with Seberg's suicide.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 16, 2018
fun little book about disillusioned french left wingers. it's got long sentences, guys getting drunk and musing about honour and communism in bars, and some nice characterisation.
August 26, 2017
"A love story - tender, bold and passionate" - said the cover. Well, the novel contains a certain love affair but it is sweezed between absurdist, symbolic and burlesque pieces with deep reflections on the duty and honor..
I've read 4 novels by Gary at this point and this one was the toughest. Just copy-pasted this sentence to convey the idea of the writing style (and I thought that only Tolstoy would write a sentence well worth a paragraph..)
Thirty years of abstractions and ideologies, of Marxist dialectics, of tactical evolution around the party line, of resolute antideviationism, of neopatriotism, of aggressively pacifist neutral nationalism, of vigilance before the dark forces of crypto-fascist and Judaeo-Masonic cosmopolitanism, in the service of the authentic International, away from the social-Trotskyite intellectual perversion and other forms of idealogical nomadism and cryptocapitalism in the form of a vagino-nasal constriction due to a deviated political metabolism, all that had deformed him for good, twisted him into an appalling and ever-present ideomania.
I've read 4 novels by Gary at this point and this one was the toughest. Just copy-pasted this sentence to convey the idea of the writing style (and I thought that only Tolstoy would write a sentence well worth a paragraph..)
Thirty years of abstractions and ideologies, of Marxist dialectics, of tactical evolution around the party line, of resolute antideviationism, of neopatriotism, of aggressively pacifist neutral nationalism, of vigilance before the dark forces of crypto-fascist and Judaeo-Masonic cosmopolitanism, in the service of the authentic International, away from the social-Trotskyite intellectual perversion and other forms of idealogical nomadism and cryptocapitalism in the form of a vagino-nasal constriction due to a deviated political metabolism, all that had deformed him for good, twisted him into an appalling and ever-present ideomania.
December 30, 2013
Не мога да повярвам, че най-после прочетох тази книга - почти три месеца. Обикновено чета Гари бавно, славно и напоително, но този път беше различно - някак не ме грабна и някак ми беше обикновена историята, въпреки умните прозрения...
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews