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Respected by his peers and hugely successful internationally in his own time, André Maurois is now hardly read. Moderate and conciliatory in everything, including his literary style, he appealed to the educated reader of his time, but did those very qualities prevent him from achieving lasting distinction and impact?

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1. An International Reputation 2. A Literary Phenomenon 3. The Middle Road 4. The Mission of Reconciliation 5. Making Sense: The ´New Biography´ 6. Mediator between France and Britain, France and the US 7. Concluding Comment. The Limits of the Middle Ground

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"Through a presentation and analysis of aspects of the life of the French writer André Maurois, Gossman´s book sheds light on an impressive number of crucial historical, political, and cultural problems faced by France from World War I through the Cold War. Understated, suggestive, and balanced in its approach to a number of controversial issues, it succeeds in showing the interest in the life of a once popular, but now largely forgotten writer, whose previous celebrity, according to a contemporary of Maurois cited by Professor Gossman, had by the 1970s ´collapsed like a soufflé.´ This book could very well have the effect of encouraging the soufflé to rise again, even if undoubtedly not to its original height." - David Carroll, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Irvine, USA

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Lionel Gossman is the M. Taylor Pyne Professor of Romance Languages emeritus at Princeton University, USA.

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