During the author's travels, he meets Menalcas, a caricature of Oscar Wilde, who relates his fantastic life story. But for all his brilliance, Menalcas is only Gide's yesterday self, a discarded wraith who leaves Gide free to stop exalting the ego and embrace bodily and spiritual joy. Later Fruits of the Earth, written in 1935 during Gide's short-lived spell of communism, reaffirms the doctrine of the earlier book. But now he sees happiness not as freedom, but a submission to heroism. In a series of 'Encounters', Gide describes a Negro tramp, a drowned child, a lunatic and other casualties of life. These reconcile him to suffering, death and religion, causing him to insist that 'today's Utopia' be 'tomorrow's reality'.
| ISBN: | 9780099437833 |
| Publication date: | 7th March 2002 |
| Author: | André Gide |
| Publisher: | Vintage Classics an imprint of Random House |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 210 pages |
| Series: | Vintage Classics |
| Genres: |
Classic fiction: general and literary Narrative theme: Interior life Fiction in translation |