Firstly, what is the book about? Written over the last eighteen years of his life and intended to be read only posthumously, this tremendous creation sprang from the writer's unflinching examination of the conundrum of our moral ambivalence: why, knowing what is right, do people do wrong? du Gard's complex response constitutes one of the most devestating critiques of human behavior ever produced.

"Lieutenant-Colonel de Maumort" is du Gard's magnum opus - an exemplary symphony of words and phrases, thoughts and ideas, theories and examinations. It is the large scale portrayal of his country's transformations during and after World War I, as observed by its meditative protagonist and narrator, Maumort, a soldier, gentleman, and soldier. Sadly, the novel is unfinished. The novel is a story of self-exploration, similar to the works of Tolstoy and Proust. It is a benchmark in not only French literature, but literature.

"Something strange just happened to me, my friend. I put down my pen without even finishing a sentence, suddenly overwhelmed by an immense distress...The obviousness of my approaching end had abruptly weighed down on me. A horrible sensation of vertigo, the vertigo of complete indifference." du Gard writes, through Maumort, what he feels, what he thinks about, what he knows, what he wishes he knew. He writes of dreams. He writes of nightmares. He writes of day to day life. He writes of the past. He writes of the future, and all 750 plus pages are du Gard's life, his blood, his bone, his soul.

And who is this Roger Martin du Gard? He was born in France in 1881. Trained as a paleographer, he turned to fiction in his early twenties. A prolific author who lived in the country and devoted himself almost solely to his vocation, he also write several plays, a brilliant novella about incest, a book memorializing his long friendship with Andre Gide, and one of the century's great diaries. Yet we've never heard of him.