SOURCE: "A Flawed Eden," in Francois Mauriac: Novelist & Moralist, Asia Publishing House, 1963, pp. 117-22.

An Indian educator and author, Iyengar has written on a wide range of subjects, variously treating English studies, education in India, religious matters, and the relation between English and Indian literature. In the following excerpt, he discusses the influence of geographical setting—primarily the Bordeaux region and Paris—on Mauriac's characters.

In M. Mauriac's fiction we are introduced . . . to a world not less distinctive than the crowded world of Dickens, the agonized and diseased world of Dostoevsky, the intense if also vanishing world of Hardy, or the dark nightmarish world of Faulkner. Geographically, it is the Gironde and Landes country—the region round Bordeaux facing the Bay of Biscay—marked by pine trees and marshy tracts, tall oak trees and endless sandy stretches. Lured to the 'lovely Landes' by Therese, Dilys Powell writes after...