May 12, 2011

When Eugène Dabit describes the false bourgeoisie

India Ink drawing
Eugène Dabit (1898-1936) is best known for his novel Hotel du Nord, published in 1929 and immortalized in the 1938 film  by Marcel Carné. Autodidact, Dabit befriended writers of the time, GionoMartin du Gard and Gide. He shares with Céline, met in 1933, the experience of misery, the one of the 1914  trenches, the one of suburbs. The work of this proletarian writer is sometimes populist, also tinted with a naturalistic despair. Villa Oasis ou les faux bourgeois, published in 1932, presents the story of Helen, a woman who moves in with her mother that she does not known. The mother lives with a former worker who became a wealthy hotelier. Dabit portrays these "new rich", their hopes and their downfall.


handwritten page
Currently, the librairie loliée offers : 

  • DABIT (Eugène). Villa Oasis ou les faux bourgeois. Paris, N.R.F., 1932, in-8, Bradel Brael binding, original covers (Asper, Genève). First edition. Limited to 331 copies, one of the 109 printed in-4 tellière on Lafuma-Navarre paper. Copy with a dedication, a India Ink drawing and a handwritten page.