Novel
Promise at Dawn
La Promesse de l'aube
Romain Gary · 1960
Synopsis
The narrator grew up alone with his mother, a former Russian actress, in Wilno, in Warsaw, then in Nice, where she ends up running a guesthouse. She has boundless faith in her son and tells anyone who will listen that he will be a great man. To achieve this, she takes on one job after another and has him learn music, dancing, fencing and drawing, before literature wins out. When war comes, he goes off to fight in the air force with this promise on his shoulders.
Context
The narrative was published by Gallimard in 1960, four years after its author's first Prix Goncourt. A fictionalised autobiography, it follows in three stages his childhood in Wilno and Warsaw, his adolescence in Nice and his war years in the Free French Air Force. The whole book is devoted to a mother's love and to the debt her son acknowledges to her. It has been adapted for the screen twice, by Jules Dassin in 1970 and by Éric Barbier in 2017.
Who it is for
A long first-person narrative, both funny and grave, carried by the figure of the mother.
Prizes and reception
Translated into English by John Markham Beach, it appeared in 1961 under the title Promise at Dawn, reissued since by New Directions.