In this classic Catholic novel, Bernanos movingly recounts the life of a young French country priest who grows to understand his provincial parish while learning spiritual humility himself. Awarded the Grand Prix for Literature by the Academie Francaise, The Diary of a Country Priest was adapted into an acclaimed film by Robert Bresson. "A book of the utmost sensitiveness and compassion... it is a work of deep, subtle and singularly encompassing art." - New York Times Book Review

In this classic Catholic novel, Bernanos movingly recounts the life of a young French country priest who grows to understand his provincial parish while learning spiritual humility himself. Awarded the Grand Prix for Literature by the Academie Francaise, The Diary of a Country Priest was adapted into an acclaimed film by Robert Bresson. "A book of the utmost sensitiveness and compassion... it is a work of deep, subtle and singularly encompassing art." - New York Times Book Review

" Le danger n'est pas dans les machines, sinon nous devrions faire ce reve absurde de les detruire par la force, a la maniere des iconoclastes qui, en brisant les images, se flattaient d'aneantir aussi les croyances. Le danger n'est pas dans la multiplication des machines, mais dans le nombre sans cesse croissant d'hommes habitues, des leur enfance, a ne desirer que ce que les machines peuvent donner. " Georges Bernanos a notamment laisse derriere lui un pamphlet visionnaire destine a reveiller les consciences. Plus d'un demi-siecle apres la disparition de son auteur, La France contre les robots reste d'une incroyable actualite. Cette apologie de la Liberte est un defi jete aux idolatries du profit et de la force, une critique du capitalisme industriel et des tyrannies modernes, ainsi qu'une denonciation du culte de la vitesse et du rendement effrene.

A moving spiritual masterpiece that shows the true meaning of divinity in a hostile world A young, shy, sickly priest is assigned to his first parish, a sleepy village in northern France. Though his faith is devout, he finds nothing but indifference and mockery. The children laugh at his teachings, his parishioners are consumed by boredom, rumours are spread about him and he is tormented by stomach pains. Even his attempts to clarify his thoughts in a diary fail to deliver him from worldly concerns. Yet somehow, despite his suffering, he tries to find love for his fellow humans, and even a state of grace. Translated by Howard Curtis

" Le danger n'est pas dans les machines, sinon nous devrions faire ce reve absurde de les detruire par la force, a la maniere des iconoclastes qui, en brisant les images, se flattaient d'aneantir aussi les croyances. Le danger n'est pas dans la multiplication des machines, mais dans le nombre sans cesse croissant d'hommes habitues, des leur enfance, a ne desirer que ce que les machines peuvent donner. " Georges Bernanos a notamment laisse derriere lui un pamphlet visionnaire destine a reveiller les consciences. Plus d'un demi-siecle apres la disparition de son auteur, La France contre les robots reste d'une incroyable actualite. Cette apologie de la Liberte est un defi jete aux idolatries du profit et de la force, une critique du capitalisme industriel et des tyrannies modernes, ainsi qu'une denonciation du culte de la vitesse et du rendement effrene. Avec vehemence, Bernanos conteste l'idee selon laquelle le systeme materialiste et mercantile conduirait fatalement au bonheur de l'humanite.

One of the great mavericks of French literature, Georges Bernanos combined raw realism with a spiritual focus of visionary intensity. Mouchette stands with his celebrated Diary of a Country Priest as the perfection of his singular art.
"Nothing but a little savage" is how the village school-teacher describes fourteen-year-old Mouchette, and that view is echoed by every right-thinking local citizen. Mouchette herself doesn't bother to contradict it; ragged, foulmouthed, dirt-poor, a born liar and loser, she knows herself to be, in the words of the story, "alone, completely alone, against everyone." Hers is a tale of "tragic solitude" in which despair and salvation appear to be inextricably intertwined.
Bernanos uncompromising genius was a powerful inspiration to Flannery O'Connor, and Mouchette was the source of a celebrated movie by Robert Bresson.

In this classic Catholic novel, Bernanos movingly recounts the life of a young French country priest who grows to understand his provincial parish while learning spiritual humility himself. Awarded the Grand Prix for Literature by the Academie Francaise, The Diary of a Country Priest was adapted into an acclaimed film by Robert Bresson. "A book of the utmost sensitiveness and compassion... it is a work of deep, subtle and singularly encompassing art." - New York Times Book Review

In a small village in northern France, Monsieur Ouine, a retired professor, is taken in by the dull local squire, Anthelme de Nereis, and soon rules the life of both Anthelme and his wife, Ginette. A fourteen-year-old fatherless boy, Philippe Dorval, flees home and, on impulse, follows Madame de Nereis to her chateau. There the squire, who is dying, tells the boy that his father is actually alive and well--that despite what Philippe's mother had told him, his father had not died in World War I. The forsaken boy finds himself on that fatal evening succumbing to Monsieur Ouine's embrace after falling into a drunken sleep in the old professor's bed. The events of the tempestuous night lead to upheaval in the village the next morning, when, at dawn, a boy's body is found afloat in a stream near the chateau.

"The Impostor" is a searching account of the torment that besets Father Cenabre, historian of mysticism and controversial star of the Parisian clergy, when his faith suddenly deserts him. As the priest struggles to cope secretly, he crosses paths with associates on the complex margins of a Church facing modern politics in the early twentieth century. Georges Bernanos's compelling and dark portraits of that shadowy world's inhabitants throw into stark relief the determination of a humble priest, Father Chevance, who alone knows Cenabre's secret and struggles to save him. By turn touching and scathing, The Impostor explores the delicate balance between redemption and damnation and illuminates the fragility of our constructed selves. Georges Bernanos (1888-1948), one of the twentieth century's most powerful and idiosyncratic writers, was also the most original Roman Catholic writer of his time. "The Impostor," the second of his novels published in French, is the last to be translated into English.