He gives a deep reflection all through the book on the nature of love, and the fact that, according to him, love can never be complete as we all love something we idealize about somebody else which make it a “counterfeited love”. I think André Gide manages to be really honest about human nature, covering both its beautiful and disgusting aspects.Īmong relationships, Gide’s favorite ones in this novel seem to be romantic relationships. The main topic of the book, according to me, is “ human relationships”, honesty and lies. This book, as we just saw and will study more in depth in the next part, is divided into several plots and these plots involve several characters coming from different families and social backgrounds. I will be really quick on this part as giving you too much information may spoil your enjoyment of the novel (that, I hope, you will be willing to read at the end of this post). The genuine counterfeiters are the liars. There is, indeed, a story about real counterfeiters, but this is a tiny little subplot. Contrary to what we could think when reading the title, this book does not (really) talks about money, but about relationships. I am talking about the faux-monnayeurs by André Gide, translated into The Counterfeiterspublished in 1925 and first translated in 1927. We will begin this new series with quite a tough, but such a beautiful novel. NB: This book is not available for free on the Internet, but you can certainly find a second-hand version for really cheap online or at your local library. That is the reason why I feel quite confident talking about such a deep subject, hoping I will be able to have you interested, help you understand the literary culture of my country and have you want to read these books yourself. As you may (or may not) know, I have been studying foreign literature in college for three years now, but I have spent a few years studying French literature before getting specialized in literature of the English-speaking world. Today, I want to start a series with you, in which I will review several French, Irish, British or American books (sometimes, we will cover other types of literature as well, especially Russian and Greek). I hope that, through this series, you will expand your literary culture, and that we will be able to talk about the reviewed books together in order to expand our knowledge together. However, I tell you quite often that one of the most elegant thing in the world is knowledge. We usually spend time together talking about style, elegance and good manners.

Les Faux-monnayeurs by André Gide