ANDRE MALRAUX: The Indochina Adventure

by Walter Langlois ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

Malraux has told this story before in his novel Royal Way, a possible deterrent to present readership. Yet Langlois' book deserves attention, for it is more than a beautifully written study of the 1923-25 Indochinese sojourn of Malraux in his early twenties. Already a rising literary star, Malraux arrived in Indochina at twenty-two on his wedding tour. Out of a mixture of motivations, not excluding the financial ones, Malraux's party made for an obscure Khmer Empire ruin and carted away bas-reliefs from its frieze. He was intercepted, by the French colonial administration and indicted for art theft. Thus commenced one of the great French cause-celebres of the inter-war period. The colons of Indochina then condemned on Malraux for being literary, cosmopolitan, and egalitarian. Found guilty in a rigged trial and sentenced to a prison term of three years, Malraux voluntarily returned to Indochina after successfully appealing his conviction in Paris. There, he was a crusading editor of a newspaper, but his acerbic pen so agonized the scandal-ridden bureaucracy that his newspaper was abruptly silenced. Langlois takes up some of the universals of man's existence that Malraux himself explored in Man's Fate and Man's Hope. His inquiry into one case history of the struggle between the Ariel and Caliban in Western civilization is estimable; yet the potential readership for his book is special.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Praeger

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1966

Categories: NONFICTION