The Weakling and the Enemy

by François Mauriac, Gerard Manley Hopkins

Genres: France

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1951

About the author

François Charles Mauriac was a French writer and a member of the Académie française. He was awarded the 1952 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the deep spiritual insight and the artistic intensity with which he has in his novels penetrated the drama of human life." Mauriac is acknowledged to be one of the greatest Roman Catholic writers of the 20th century.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mauriac is never "enjoyable" per se, but he is unfailingly profound and disturbing. This became a page-turner when I was about 80 pages from the end. I kept wishing I could have read it in French Lit class. There is so much meat here! I know there was a great deal more lost upon me, because I don't speak French. A few great lines from this book were these:

"Evil is as infectious as any disease."

"Of what had formerly been in him an excessive sensitivity of conscience, he retained now nothing but the vocabulary."

"What is it in our nature that urges us to repeat gestures that used to make us feel physically sick?"

"Of what use is faith if it is not lived? What value has an intellectual system, a theory of the universe, be it ever so perfunctory, if one does not guide one's conduct by its rules?"

"How strange it is to look at a face that we have loved when we love it no longer,"