French novelist. His novels are studies, from a Roman Catholic standpoint, of the psychological and moral problems of the Catholic and provincial middle class, usually set in his native city of Bordeaux and the Landes region of southwestern France.
Le Baiser au lépreux/A Kiss for the Leper (1922) describes the conflict of an unhappy marriage, while the irreconcilability of Christian practice and human nature is examined in
Fleuve de feu/River of Fire (1923),
Le Désert de l'amour/The Desert of Love (1925), and
Thérèse Desqueyroux (1927). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1952.
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