Mauriac, François (1885-1970)

French novelist. His novels are studies, from a Roman Catholic standpoint, of the psychological and moral problems of the Catholic and provincial middle class, usually set in his native city of Bordeaux and the Landes region of southwestern France. Le Baiser au lépreux/A Kiss for the Leper (1922) describes the conflict of an unhappy marriage, while the irreconcilability of Christian practice and human nature is examined in Fleuve de feu/River of Fire (1923), Le Désert de l'amour/The Desert of Love (1925), and Thérèse Desqueyroux (1927). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952.

Other novels include Génitrix/The Family (1923), Le Noeud de vipères/The Vipers' Tangle (1932), Le Mystère Frontenac/The Frontenac Mystery (1933), La Pharisienne/A Woman of the Pharisees (1941), and Le Sagouin/The Little Misery (1950). Just before his death, Mauriac published one of his finest novels, Un Adolescent d'autrefois (1969). He also produced the plays Asmodée (1938), Les Mals Aimés (1945), and Le Passage du malin (1948), and poetry, including Les Mains jointes (1909) and Orages (1925).

His critical and other writings include works on Proust in 1926, Racine in 1928, and Jesus in 1936, Trois grands hommes devant Dieu (1947) (a study of Molière, Rousseau, and Flaubert), Mémoires intérieurs (1959), Ce que je crois/What I Believe (1962), a work on De Gaulle (1964), and several volumes of his Journal. Maltaverne was published posthumously.