Léon Hennique Novel
Complete Novel 'A Character' & Rare French Literary Translations
Category: Octave Mirbeau – Les Écrivains
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A biting satirical tale by Octave Mirbeau featuring Joseph Reinach at a casino, revealing his ambitious dreams of becoming France’s Grand Inquisitor. This 1897 masterpiece brilliantly skewers political hypocrisy and social climbing during the Panama scandal era. One evening at the Casino in Gennesaret-by-the-Sea, Joseph Reinach and I found ourselves seated side by side at…
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Octave Mirbeau’s sharp 1898 literary critique examining Lucien Muhlfeld’s ‘Le Mauvais Désir’ and the state of French literature during a time of social upheaval. A masterful essay blending wit, cultural commentary, and penetrating analysis of jealousy and desire in fin de siècle fiction. It seems we haven’t the time nor the taste for reading books…
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Octave Mirbeau’s intimate portrait of Belgian Symbolist poet Georges Rodenbach, exploring his fear of death, love of urban life, and the melancholic beauty of Bruges that shaped his celebrated works. A touching tribute from 1899. I Edmond de Goncourt, who had little love for poets – or rather, who loved very few poets – once…
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A biting satirical piece by Octave Mirbeau (1899) lamenting the death of Georges Galapiat and the decline of Parisian boulevard culture. This sharp social critique captures the bohemian spirit of Belle Époque France through witty anecdotes and the recurring lament ‘Poor France! This week they buried Georges Galapiat at Montmartre—practically on the sly. Georges Galapiat!…
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Octave Mirbeau’s scathing 1899 letter to a Belgian magistrate who banned his book The Garden of Tortures in Bruges. A masterful satire on censorship, hypocrisy, and bourgeois morality. I have learnt, through a brief news dispatch and a letter from a friend that was scarcely more illuminating, that my book The Garden of Tortures has…
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A sharp, satirical 1900 essay by Octave Mirbeau on women’s emancipation, featuring his trademark wit and controversial views on gender roles. Don’t think from what follows that I’m an enemy of women. On the contrary, I’m such a friend to them that I detest all these crude demands that defeminise them, and I can’t help…
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A biting satirical essay by Octave Mirbeau from 1900, where a Dahomean man at the Paris Exposition laments the loss of his country’s ‘glorious’ traditions of human sacrifice under French colonial rule. Mirbeau’s sharp irony exposes the absurdity of both ‘civilising’ colonialism and romanticised barbarism. I have made the acquaintance of one of those Dahomean…
Léon Hennique Novel 