Romain Gary // Forest of Anger

Rare copy of the first English Edition of “Éducation Européenne”, its true first edition published in England during the second world war.

Publisher’s cloth binding, illustrated dust jacket with flaps in very good condition with minor wear to the extremities.

Gary’s first novel, an episodic narrative of anti-German resistance in the forests of Wilno – which was what his hometown Vilnius was then called – was written in fits and starts in a bunk at an RAF barracks.

When it was finished, it was submitted to editors at the journal La France Libre, a Gaullist periodical run at that time by Raymond Aron who appreciated it, and was quickly accepted for publication in English translation by the Cresset Press.

It appeared in the last days of 1944 under the title Forest of Anger.

It did not appear in its French “original” until nine months later, but that “original” was already significantly different. Forest of Anger contains a great deal of Polish material, from songs to quotations to invocations of the national anthem. However, Éducation européenne, its supposed source text, contains no references to Polish language or culture; and it has added chapters that did not figure in the English pre-original -by summer 1945, Poland had been occupied by Soviet troops, and all hopes for the renaissance of a fully independent nation – the dream of the characters in Forest of Anger, and the reason for their military resistance to German occupation – had been dashed.

Source: David Bellos : https://transatlantic-cultures.org/en/catalog/romain-gary-how-to-be-someone-else

A rare, hard to find copy of this book, in this very good condition (minimal wear of the dust jacket).