Release date is 2026-04-10

Laurent Vogel, Robin Tremblay and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned images of public domain material from the Google Books project.)

La maison blanche by Léon Werth is a novel written in the early 20th century. It follows a Parisian narrator whose bout of serious ear illness leads him into a private clinic, turning hospitalization into a sharp, tender exploration of pain, dignity, and everyday comedy. Woven through are vivid memories of his childhood behind a wine-shop counter near the rue de la Gaîté, a fearless friend named Henriette, years of poverty, odd jobs, and humiliations, all observed with irony and compassion. The result feels like an autobiographical voyage where the hospital becomes a vantage point on life.

The opening of the narrative begins with Octave Mirbeau’s preface praising the author’s fierce sensitivity and framing the coming “voyage” in a hospital room. The narrator first reflects on illness as a place of rest, experiment, and even humor, then recalls his upbringing among cochers and street girls, his bond with Henriette, and the stern counterworld of an academic uncle and ambitious aunt. He drifts from school into hunger and precarious work—tempted to steal a cutlet, humiliated by a preening doctor, writing a brochure for a fortune-teller, churning out exam “corrigés,” and interviewing criminals—before an otitis caught at the seaside lays him low. As pain mounts, a chance visit from a kind artists’ model brings solace, his friend-doctor and a specialist call for urgent surgery, and he is carried to a private clinic, pausing to sketch grotesque and touching clinic types (a capricious Russian patient, a mercenary director) before settling into a bright ward where his watchful eye is ready for the next act. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

Originally published: Paris: Eugène Fasquelle, 1913