Thomas the Impostor by Jean Cocteau
Cocteau's breakthrough novel on the horrors of World War I. Too young to fight, Thomas assumes a noble ancestry, adds a few extra years to his age, and becomes a soldier. In this guise, he meets the society star Princess de Bormes and her impressionable daughter Henriette. While the princess pursues charity work with the wounded, Henriette falls in love with Guillaume. However, Guillaume, resplendent in army uniform and issued with a shiny revolver, is lost like a child in a fantasy land of their own creation. At the novel's denouement, he clings to his imposture, but in mind, if not body, he has grasped the real meaning of war. This visionary novel is a hymn to the cult of youth in which World War I battlefields become an exaggerated spectacle where fiction and reality are inseparable.
Cocteau, Jean: - Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), a French writer, artist and film director, was one of the most influential creative figures in the Parisian avant-garde. He wrote poetry, novels, memoirs, plays, and operas and was a prolific illustrator, designer, painter and sculptor. In the second half of his fifty-year career he produced and directed groundbreaking surrealist films, most notably Blood of a Poet (1930), Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orpheus (1949). New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael called him the progenitor of the new wave of French filmmakers. By the end of his life he had published 23 books of poems, seven novels, seven screenplays, four memoirs, overseen 21 theater productions, including plays, operas and ballets, 26 works with musicians, and 18 films.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780720612523 |
| ISBN 10 | 0720612527 |
| Title | Thomas the Impostor |
| Author | Jean Cocteau |
| Series | Peter Owen Modern Classics |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Peter Owen Publishers |
| Year published | 2006-02-01 |
| Number of pages | 176 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |