Monsieur Teste

The National Book Award–winning translation of Valéry’s singular novel, a strange and powerful philosophical exploration of human consciousness

Paul Valéry was obsessed with exploring the conscious mind, and it was this preoccupation that produced the unusual masterpiece of modern fiction that is Monsieur Teste. Although not autobiographical in any usual sense, Valéry’s only novel is a profoundly personal book, a portrait of a character whose mind is shown in two aspects—detached from the senses and engaged in the events of everyday life. This volume also includes “Snapshots of Monsieur Teste"—passages from Valéry’s Notebooks that give a closer view of Teste.

The Collected Works of Paul Valéry, the first collected edition of the writer in English, features new translations, the original French on facing pages for poetic works, and editorial notes.