The Counterfeiters

"My novel hasn't got a subject. Yes, I know it sounds stupid...let's say, if you prefer it, it hasn't got one subject...and the subject of the book, if you must have one, is just that the very struggle between what reality offers him and what he himself desires to make of it." In a novel about a novelist writing a novel that mirrors the novel he is in, what is the reality of the story? The Counterfeiters, written by Nobel Prize winner, André Gide, is an impressively layered and experimental book that follows the story of Édouard X., an aspiring author and his surrounding schoolmates at the Pension Azaïs, some of whom are involved in a counterfeiting ring. Observing their actions and motivations, Édouard begins to question the value of a counterfeit: what differentiates the real and fake, where the line of authentic reality lies, and how the very idea of counterfeiting transcends the physical coin itself and applies to those who produce them. Featuring both The Counterfeiters and The Journal of the Counterfeiters, this edition of André Gide's self-proclaimed, "first novel," is a classic of French literature reimagined for modern readers.