Books by Francois Mauriac

Margaret of Cortona was an Italian penitent of the Third Order of St. Francis. She was born in Laviano, near Perugia, and died in Cortona. She was canonized in 1728. She is the patron saint of the falsely accused; hobos; homeless; insane; orphaned; mentally ill; midwives; penitents; single mothers; reformed prostitutes; third children; tramps. Saint Margaret of Cortona aroused Mauriac's interest because very little was known about her in France and because she succumbed to human love and even had a child. This interest distracted him in a time when the Germans were all over France and he followed her wherever she led him. This is the story of one such spiritual encounter.

The thinking and suffering of the author of Remembrance of Things Past are intimately exposed in these letters to Mauriac. Mauriac, François 1885–1970, French writer. Mauriac achieved success in 1922 and 1923 with Le Baiser au lépreux and Genitrix (tr. of both in The Family, 1930). Generally set in or near his native Bordeaux, his novels are imbued with his profound, though nonconformist, Roman Catholicism. His characters exist in a tortured universe; nature is evil and man eternally prone to sin. His major novels are The Desert of Love (1925, tr. 1929), Thérèse (1927, tr. 1928), and Vipers'' Tangle (1932, tr. 1933). Other works include The Frontenacs (1933, tr. 1961) and Woman of the Pharisees (1941, tr. 1946); a life of Racine (1928) and of Jesus (1936, tr. 1937); and plays, notably Asmodée (1938, tr. 1939). Also a distinguished essayist, Mauriac became a columnist for Figaro after World War II. Collections of his articles and essays include Journal, 1932–39 (1947, partial tr. Second Thoughts, 1961), Proust''s Way (1949, tr. 1950), and Cain, Where Is Your Brother? (tr. 1962). Mauriac received the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature.

France's great Catholic author and Nobel Prize winner unfolds his thoughts on a variety of topics in a series of letters written to such men as Albert Camus, Jean Cocteau, Pierre Schaeffer and Jacques Riviere. Readers of Proust's Way, Men I Hold Great, and The Stumbling Block will find intense interest in Mauriac's reflections on the death of Georges Bernanos, the Claudel-Gide correspondence, and the Routier youth movement.

From the moment she walks from court having been charged with attempting to poison her husband, to her banishment, escape to Paris, and final years of solitude and waiting, the life of Therese Desqueyroux is passionate and tortured.

Francois Mauriac's masterpiece and one of the greatest Catholic novels, Therese Desqueyroux is the haunting story of an unhappily married young woman whose desperation drives her to thoughts of murder.

In this translation of two seminal works by Mauriac, the 1930 novel "What Was Lost" and its theoretical basis, the 1929 essay "God and Mammon", Raymond MacKenzie re-introduces Mauriac to the English speaking world.