The Immoralist is a recollection of events that Michel narrates to his three visiting friends. The Immoralist is a novel by André Gide, published in France in 1902. (Book 778 from 1001 books) - L'immoraliste = The Immoralist, André Gide This book is dangerous in the wrong hands.Ī disturbing but important experience and a chance to reflect on the self and where one fits on the continuum. I found this book haunting, sublime and wicked. In the end he calls on his friends so that he can confess and likely seduce them into offering in their spirits to him like a soul-thirsty incubus. Most cruelly of all he turns on his wife and watches her die while at the same time sucking in all of her beauty, loyalty and kindness to enforce his own life force. He facilitates the underprivileged to turn against each other through the use of trickery and guile so that he can watch like the most selfish of voyeurs. His appreciation for youths turns to taboo encounters of the most predatory kind.

Then delusion sets in.he mistakes his desires for needs and the most subtle of evils begins to occur. We are smitten to the periodic devotions to his wife, his superficial helpfulness to those in need, his appreciation of the underdogs of society and his rejection of snobbery and elitism. We are initially excited by his sexual awakening and burgeoning awareness of his own sensual beauty. We are seduced by beauty, attempts at love, philosophical arguments, works of great art and intimate conversation. We are in the heat, windstorms, alpine winters and sensuous springtimes. We are in North Africa, France, Switzerland and Italy. The book utilizes the vicissitudes of landscape, weather and nuances of emotions to seduce the reader into rooting for this most hateful of villains and his attempts at self-transformation. In between is some of the most exquisite writing and the transformation of a young man from upstanding citizen to a malignant narcissist. The book begins with a suppressed young dutiful intellectual and ends with a despairing debauched and self-deluded libertine. This book mesmerized and shocked me in equal measure.īeautiful in its writing, quiet in its execution, seductive in its message and destructive in its implications. 5 'satanic, provocative, deceptive' stars !!

El Inmoralista by André Gide