André Gide

By the end of his life Gide would have been on most lists of the ten most important novelists of the twentieth century. His Paludes (1895) was one of the beginnings of the modern novel; his masterpiece, Les Faux-Monnayeurs (1925), is one of its most ambitious achievements. But his name was also familiar the world over to millions who had never read his books: he had long since become a controversial figure, his views on political and sexual matters being better known than his literary work.