French writer, humanist, and moralist who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947.

André Gide was born in Paris. His father, professor of law at the University of Paris, died in 1880 and Gide was raised by his Calvinist mother, who devoted her life to him.

Gide attended several school schools. At the École Alsacienne Gide developed a serious interest in literature and published his first book, LES CAHIERS D'ANDRÉ WALTER in 1891. In 1893 and 1894 Gide traveled to North Africa, learning different moral and sexual conventions which gave basis for his psychological novels The Immoralist and Strait is the Gate. He became also close friends with Oscar Wilde whom he met in Algiers, and whose caricature Gide draws in his memoir.

In 1895 Gide married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux. His book of prose poems, Fruits of the Earth, appeared in 1987 and became in the 1920s his most popular work, influencing a generation of young writers, including the existentialists Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre.

In 1916 Gide started to keep a second journal, in which he recorded his search for God. After mid-1920s he became champion of society's victims and outcasts and demanded more humane conditions for criminals. In July 1925 Gide set out for a journey to the Congo with his friend Marc Allegret, returning in 1927. During this time he experienced religious crisis, and published his autobiography SI LE GRAIN NE MEURT, which has been compared to Jaques Rousseau's Confessions.

Gide's defence of homosexuality in CORYDON (1924) was violently attaced, and in the 1930s Gide announced his conversion to Communism. After disillusioning trip to the Soviet Union he made a decisive break.

From 1942 until the end of WW II Gide lived in North Africa. In the 1940s he began receive honors, which culminated in the Nobel Prize.

SEE ALSO: Rainer Maria Rilke

Selected works:

• LES CAHIERS D'ANDRÉ WALTER, 1891 - The Notebook of André Walter
• LE TRAITÉ DU NARCISSE, 1891
• LE VOYAGE D'URIEN, 1983 - Urien's Voyage
• LA TENTATIVE AMOUREUSE, 1893 - transl. in The Return of the Prodigal
• LES NOURRITURES TERRESTRES, 1897 - Fruits of the Earth
• LES CAHIERS D'ANDRE WALTER, 1891
• L'IMMORALISTE, 1902 - The Immoralist
• STRAIT IS THE GATE - LA PORTE ÉTROITE, 1909 - Strait is the Gate - Ahdas portti
• LES CAVES DU VATICAN, 1914 - Lafcadio's Adventures
• LA SYMPHONIE PASTORALE, 1919 - Pastoral Symphony
• CORYDON, 1924
• SI LE GRAIN NE MEURT, 1924-26 - If It Die...
• LES FAUX-MONNAYEURS, 1926 - The Counterfeiters
• L'ECOLE DES FEMMES, 1929
• ROBERT, 1929
• EDIPE, 1931 (play)
• GENEVIÉVE, 1936
• JOURNAL 1889-1939, 1939
• JOURNAL 1939-42, 1946
• THÉSÉE, 1946 - Two Legends: Oidipus and Theseus
• JOURNAL 1939-49, 1950
• ET NUNC MANET IN TE, 1951 - Madeleine

Compiled by Kuusankoski Public Library, Finland (© 1997) and René Märtin (© 1998-2001).