Early in his literary career Maurice Genevoix emerged as an important witness of his time because of his personal experience at the battle of the Marne, recounted in his tetralogy Ceux de 14 (The Men of 1914), whose title refers to the soldiers of World War I. This work remains one of the most poignant accounts of the war. Genevoix's acute sense of observation was later transferred to the world of nature, and he became a well-known author of regional novels. His success was assured when he received the Prix Goncourt in 1925 for Raboliot, a regional novel which, in his typical manner, exalts the visible beauties of nature and its hidden secrets. Continuing in the literary style of the nineteenth-century writer Guy de Maupassant, Genevoix's realism accentuates those individuals who are frustrated in their desire to remain apart from the laws of the socialized world. An internationally recognized lecturer, he...