French · 1869–1951
André Gide probed the conflicts between desire and morality in novels that scandalized and influenced twentieth-century literature. "The Immoralist," "Strait Is the Gate," and "The Counterfeiters" examined characters trapped between Protestant guilt and sensual freedom—tensions the bisexual author knew intimately. The 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature honored his "comprehensive and artistically significant writings, in which human problems and conditions have been presented with a fearless love of truth." Gide's journals remain as widely read as his fiction.