Novel
Moira
Moïra
Julien Green · 1950
Synopsis
Joseph Day, nineteen years old, red-haired, raised in the countryside in an uncompromising Protestant morality, enters a university in Virginia. He lodges with a landlady, in the room that a young girl, Moïra, occupied before him. His fellow students, more worldly, mock his austerity, and some push him towards women; only one, David, who shares his faith, tries to become his friend. Joseph, for whom the body leads to hell, struggles against a desire that he refuses.
Context
The novel appeared from Plon in 1950. Its author transposes into it the three years he had spent as a student in Virginia, in the American South from which his family came. He stages in it the struggle between spiritual impulse and carnal desire, which runs through his work and which he had himself experienced. The action is set in the South of the twenties, among students who are disconcerted by Joseph's puritanism.
Who it is for
A novel in a sober language, centred on a young man's inner struggle against his own desire.
Prizes and reception
In English, the novel was published under the title Moira, in the translation by Denise Folliot.
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