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Overview
The Impostor is a searching account of the torment that besets Father Cénabre, historian of mysticism and controversial star of the Parisian clergy, when his faith suddenly deserts him. As the priest struggles to cope secretly, he crosses paths with associates on the complex margins of a Church facing modern politics in the early twentieth century. Georges Bernanos’s compelling and dark portraits of that shadowy world’s inhabitants throw into stark relief the determination of a humble priest, Father Chevance, who alone knows Cénabre’s secret and struggles to save him. By turn touching and scathing, The Impostor explores the delicate balance between redemption and damnation and illuminates the fragility of our constructed selves. Georges Bernanos (1888–1948), one of the twentieth century’s most powerful and idiosyncratic writers, was also the most original Roman Catholic writer of his time. The Impostor, the second of his novels published in French, is the last to be translated into English.Synopsis
Novel about the torment that besets Father Cenabre, historian of mysticism and controversial star of the Parisian clergy, when his faith suddenly deserts him.
Library Journal
Perhaps it's because Father C nabre has just gone through another wearying round of confessions with Monsieur Pernichon. Perhaps it's because he has spent years in study and writing without having arrived at a palatable system of ideas. But one gloomy night the good father comes to a terrible realization: he no longer believes. It hardly helps to summon meek Father Chevance for discussion, and trying to do violence to himself doesn't work either, so Father C nabre sets out on a much more desperate course of action and in his self-serving despair brings down a host of people with him. An early work by a distinguished 20th-century French novelist and his last to be translated into English, this is a novel of ideas featuring a hardened, arrogant man whose predicament doesn't necessarily provoke sympathy. Penetrating if slow-moving, the text winds itself out over 250 pages without a single chapter break. Serious readers will be rewarded, however. Mostly for academic collections.--Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal" Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.