"Count d'Orgel" is a study of a three-sided relationship set in Parisian society after World War I. Count Anne d'Orgel and his wife Maliant befriend the young Francois de Seryeuse, and find that their marriage is alternately qualified and confirmed by the feelings released.

Set in Paris during the last years of World War One, this is one of the finest, most delicate love stories ever written. The narrator, a boy of 16, tells of his love affair with a young woman whose husband is away at the Front.

Count d'Orgel is handsome, charming, and carefree, a model of cool aristocratic aplomb. His wife, the Countess, is beautiful and pure and loves her husband more than anything in the world. But from the moment the d'Orgels meet and befriend the clever young Francois de Seryeuse backstage at the circus, all three of these supremely civilized and witty people are caught up in an ever more intricate and seductive dance of deception and self-deception. At Count d'Orgel's masquerade ball, the real disguises are those of the human heart.
Completed just before Raymond Radiguet's death at the age of twenty, "Count d'Orgel's Ball" is a love story that is as disturbing as it is delicious.

As the First World War reaches its final year, an illicit love affair is beginning between a sixteen-year-old boy and a young woman married to a soldier at the front. They meet secretly in her flat on the outskirts of Paris, in cornfields and on river banks. When she receives letters from her husband, they burn them together. Intoxicated by passion, they cannot bear to end their affair, even when it causes a scandal among their friends and neighbours. Instead, they hurtle towards tragedy. Written in spare, haunting prose when Raymond Radiguet was still a teenager, this semi-autobiographical novel became an instant bestseller and its author was hailed as a genius before his tragic death at the age of twenty. Expressing all the anguish and joy of adolescence, it is a work of startling imagery and subtle beauty. Translated by Robert Baldick with an introduction by Fay Weldon

He belonged to the solemn race of men whose lives unfold too quickly to their close.?Jean Cocteau
"The Devil in the Flesh," one of the finest, most delicate love stories ever written, is set in Paris during the last year of the First World War. The narrator, a boy of sixteen, tells of his love affair with Martha Lacombe, a young woman whose soldier husband is away at the front. The liaison soon becomes a scadal and their friends, horrified and incredulous, refuse to accept what is happening - even when the affair reaches its tragic climax.
In the film "Le Diable au Corps" (with Gerard Philipe and Micheline Presle), Claude Autant-Lara recreated this story of the First World War with nostalgic tenderness. His sensitive dramatization treats the affair with such delicacy that many critics consider the love scenes to be among the most beautiful ever photographed. The film won the Grand Prix and the International Critics Prize.
Raymond Radiguet wrote "The Devil in the Flesh" between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, about his own adolescent love affair with an older woman. He died from typhoid fever at the age of twenty. His only other novel is "Comte d'Orgel," also available from Marion Boyars Publishers.
..".a triumph of the poetic intelligence: a masterpiece..."?"New Statesman"

Hailed by Jean Cocteau as a "masterpiece," and by the "Guardian" as "Bret Easton Ellis's "Less Than Zero, avant la lettre,"" this taut tale written by a teenager in the form of a frank "confession" is a gem of early twentieth century romanticism. Long unavailable in the U.S., it is here presented in a sparkling new translation.
Set in Paris during the First World War, it tells the story of Francois, the 16-year-old narrator, who falls in love with Marthe, an older, married woman whose husband is off fighting at the front. What seems to begin as a charming tale of puppy love quickly darkens, and they launch into a steamy affair. In the tense environment of the wartime city, their love takes on a desperation transcending their youthfulness.
And as the badly-kept secret of their relationship unfolds, scandal descends, leading the story to a final, startling conclusion--and causing the book itself to become a scandal when it was first published in 1923, just before the author's death at the age of 20.

Je vais encourir bien des reproches. Mais qu'y puis-je ? Est-ce ma faute si j'eus douze ans quelques mois avant la dclaration de la guerre ? Sans doute, les troubles qui me vinrent de cette priode extraordinaire furent d'une sorte qu'on n'prouve jamais cet ge; mais comme il n'existe rien d'assez fort pour nous vieillir malgr les apparences, c'est en enfant que je devais me conduire dans une aventure o dj un homme et prouv de l'embarras.