Release date is 2026-04-03

Nous fûmes surpris -- La Valise vide -- Le Pique-nique -- Anonymes.

Laurent Vogel and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF/Gallica))

"Plainte contre inconnu" by Pierre Drieu La Rochelle is a novel written in the early 20th century. It sketches a postwar portrait of disillusioned young men in Paris, especially a veteran, Guy La Marche, seen through a sharp, introspective narrator amid bars, theaters, and drifting salons. The book probes masculinity, class, pleasure, and moral fatigue through a circle of soldiers, artists, and socialites whose bravado masks spiritual vacancy.

The opening of the novel moves from the armistice’s stunned relief to nights of drink and bravado in Paris, where the narrator meets the taciturn tank lieutenant Guy La Marche, the loud poet Ablain, and the coarse music-hall star Impéria. La Marche’s strength flickers between impulsive action (a crisp drubbing of a charretier on May Day) and hesitant, compromised desires (a hospital scene with a young man, a nocturnal flight to Marseille, then back to the same bars and postures). His contradictions—reactionary reflexes, modesty shaded by vanity, and a taste for decadent company—surface alongside a stop-start affair with Peau and a charged encounter at a fair with Claire. The scene then pivots to Gonzague, a beautiful, empty social comet: he chases diversion, pilfers trifles, gambles, cultivates minor literary circles, and lives on telephones, taxis, and small jobs, all to avoid thought, work, and durable love. Hints of confused sexuality and a worship of “passing time” mark him as the emblem of modern vacancy. Through these linked portraits, the start lays out a satirical, melancholy map of postwar Parisian aimlessness. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Paris: Gallimard, 1924