Les Hauts-Quartiers

by Paul Gadenne, Pierre Mertens (Preface)

Didier Aubert, jeune écrivain mystique, a soif d’absolu. Atteint de tuberculose et perdu au milieu de la bourgeoisie d’une ville de province, sa quête spirituelle prend des allures de révolte. De dépouillement en dépouillement, cet homme en sursis fuit le monde pour toucher à la sainteté. En chemin, il accède aux vertiges de l’amour. Réussira-t-il à reconquérir sa noblesse perdue avant de mourir ?

800 pages, Pocket Book

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Paul Gadenne, né à Armentières (Nord) le 4 avril 1907 et mort à Cambo-les-Bains (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) le 1er mai 1956, est un écrivain français.

Reviews

[D]

This book (761 pages) took forever to finish but I greatly enjoyed it. It relates the sad story of Didier, an aspiring author, who is despised, like all non-Catholic intellectuals, and badly treated by the bourgeois 'elite' of Irube, a small town in south-western France. His descent into misery, and ultimately death, is exemplified by the steady decline of the quality of his lodgings. Along the way, the hypocrisy and oppression by the ruling classes is described as it would be in the early 1950's, when the book was written, e.g. by the then powerful Communist Party PCF.

Gadenne died of tuberculosis in 1956 and 'Les hauts quartiers' was not published until 1973. It received glowing reviews and was compared favorably with 'The idiot' by Dostoievski(which I have no intention of reading).

I will have to restrain myself from not immediately starting to read it again from the beginning.

[Arthur]

Le désespéré en encore plus désespéré mélangé avec la mystique d’Eckhart en ajoutant Kierkegaard