Happiness needs unhappiness. Joy goes hand in hand with sorrow. It is thanks to the shadow that we exist. We must not dream of an absurd abstraction. We must guard the bond that links us to blood and earth. 'Just as I am!' Remember that. We are a great mixture." A young man, tired of life and love, indifferent to the people and world around him, takes up a room in a Parisienne boarding house. Noises from the adjoining room draw his attention to a hole in the wall, and he observes its occupants through it. He becomes obsessed with the individual episodes of human life that play out before his eyes; love, adultery, incest, childbirth, death, thievery and betrayal. Through his voyeurism, the unnamed narrator becomes an omniscient godlike character, observing the room's inhabitants in their most private and naked moments. The hole becomes a window to the very soul of humanity and the human condition. But as with Prometheus, his godlike powers come at a cost. * * Henri Barbusse (1873 - 1935) was a French novelist, and political activist. He was editor of "Clarte", the periodicals "Monde" (1928-1935) and "Progres Civique", which published some of George Orwell's first writings. He was also literary editor for the daily newspaper "l'Humanite" from 1926 to 1929. Barbusse was the author of a 1936 biography of Joseph Stalin, titled "Staline: Un monde nouveau vu a travers un homme" (Stalin. A New World Seen Through the Man). Barbusse was an Esperantist, and was honorary president of the first congress of the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda. While writing a second biography of Stalin in Moscow, Barbusse fell ill with pneumonia and died on 30 August 1935.

A novel, translated by Robert Baldick. A young man staying in a Paris boarding house finds a hole in the wall above his bed. Alternately voyeur and seer, he obsessively studies the private moments and secret activities of his neighbors: childbirth, first love, marriage, betrayal, illness and death all present themselves to him through this spy hole. Decades ahead of its time, "Hell" shocked and scandalized the reviewing public when first released in English in 1866. Even so, the New Republic praised "the beauty of the book's nervous yet fluid rhythms... The book sweeps, away life's illusions."

Under Fire (1916) is a novel by Henri Barbusse. Written from notes taken while Barbusse was serving in the First World War, the novel was quickly recognized as a powerful tale of perseverance and comradery in the face of unspeakable suffering. Intended to promote the cause of pacifism, Under Fire is deeply critical of the rich and powerful men whose inability to live peacefully leads time and again to the sacrifice of countless human lives. "Each country whose frontiers are consumed by carnage is seen tearing from its heart ever more warriors of full blood and force. One's eyes follow the flow of these living tributaries to the River of Death. To north and south and west afar there are battles on every side. Turn where you will, there is war in every corner of that vastness." Even from a distance, war is hell on earth, but it is not something that can be described in the abstract, if it can be described at all. Such a luxury-available only to the leaders who declare war's beginning and end-is not afforded to those are sent to fight. Following a squad of French volunteers on the Western front, Henri Barbusse provides a realistically brutal vision of death and survival that refuses to glorify the loss of a single life. As a soldier-turned-pacifist, Barbusse brings his reader as close as possible to the trenches and fields of battle in order to dispel the myths that continue to justify and obscure the deaths of the poor and powerless. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Henri Barbusse's Under Fire is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.

Hell (1908) is a novel by Henri Barbusse. Immensely popular upon its publication in France, Hell earned Barbusse a reputation as a leading realist whose existential preoccupations predate the novels and plays of Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre by several decades. His portrait of ennui, isolation, and urban life remains both stylistically and thematically fresh over a century after it appeared in print. "A whole world of human beings had passed here like smoke, leaving nothing white but the window. And I? I am a man like every other man, just as that evening was like every other evening." In this claustrophobic, lyric novel, an unnamed narrator moves into a rundown apartment in Paris. There, he grows increasingly isolated from the world outside, turning instead to the lives of his many neighbors. Through the thin walls, which contain a hidden peephole, he listens and watches as strangers conduct the secret dramas of their daily lives. Witnessing acts of adultery, lesbianism, incest, theft, and abuse, he grows increasingly dependent on the adrenaline rush of voyeurism, withdrawing further and further from the life of the bustling city. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Henri Barbusse's Hell is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.

Hell (1908) is a novel by Henri Barbusse. Immensely popular upon its publication in France, Hell earned Barbusse a reputation as a leading realist whose existential preoccupations predate the novels and plays of Samuel Beckett, Albert Camus, and Jean-Paul Sartre by several decades. His portrait of ennui, isolation, and urban life remains both stylistically and thematically fresh over a century after it appeared in print. "A whole world of human beings had passed here like smoke, leaving nothing white but the window. And I? I am a man like every other man, just as that evening was like every other evening." In this claustrophobic, lyric novel, an unnamed narrator moves into a rundown apartment in Paris. There, he grows increasingly isolated from the world outside, turning instead to the lives of his many neighbors. Through the thin walls, which contain a hidden peephole, he listens and watches as strangers conduct the secret dramas of their daily lives. Witnessing acts of adultery, lesbianism, incest, theft, and abuse, he grows increasingly dependent on the adrenaline rush of voyeurism, withdrawing further and further from the life of the bustling city. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Henri Barbusse's Hell is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.

Under Fire (1916) is a novel by Henri Barbusse. Written from notes taken while Barbusse was serving in the First World War, the novel was quickly recognized as a powerful tale of perseverance and comradery in the face of unspeakable suffering. Intended to promote the cause of pacifism, Under Fire is deeply critical of the rich and powerful men whose inability to live peacefully leads time and again to the sacrifice of countless human lives. "Each country whose frontiers are consumed by carnage is seen tearing from its heart ever more warriors of full blood and force. One's eyes follow the flow of these living tributaries to the River of Death. To north and south and west afar there are battles on every side. Turn where you will, there is war in every corner of that vastness." Even from a distance, war is hell on earth, but it is not something that can be described in the abstract, if it can be described at all. Such a luxury-available only to the leaders who declare war's beginning and end-is not afforded to those are sent to fight. Following a squad of French volunteers on the Western front, Henri Barbusse provides a realistically brutal vision of death and survival that refuses to glorify the loss of a single life. As a soldier-turned-pacifist, Barbusse brings his reader as close as possible to the trenches and fields of battle in order to dispel the myths that continue to justify and obscure the deaths of the poor and powerless. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Henri Barbusse's Under Fire is a classic work of French literature reimagined for modern readers.