The Price of Feeling Alive

Michel has survived. Now he wants to discover what living might mean.

A young scholar shaped by discipline and duty, he emerges from a grave illness with an unfamiliar appetite for experience. In the orchards of North Africa and the countryside of Normandy, each new pleasure loosens the hold of his former convictions. What he once called virtue begins to look like fear.

In The Immoralist, André Gide gives the search for a true self a startling ambiguity. A man’s most sincere account of himself can also become his most persuasive defense. Through Michel’s confession, the reader becomes both confidant and judge.

How much can we ask of others in the name of becoming ourselves?