The Thief

Georges Darien (Georges Hippolyte Adrien)Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.2

Word count: 793K words
Chapters: 80

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Le voleur by Georges DarienAuthor: Darien, Georges, 1862-1921,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Mar 9, 2005

Editor's review

Le voleur (The Thief) is a novel by the French writer Georges Darien (1862–1921), released here by Project Gutenberg as an electronic edition of the original French text. Darien was known for sharp social critique and a rebellious stance, and this work continues his interrogation of property, morality, and institutional hypocrisy: the word thief in the title is itself ironic, prompting readers to ask who is truly being accused. An unclassifiable work of late nineteenth-century French literature, it will appeal to readers interested in realism, anarchist thought, and the social landscape of fin-de-siècle France. There is no need to rush after the plot; pay closer attention to the narrator's tone, the calibration of the irony, and the tension between characters and social institutions. Understanding the social context of the Third Republic will deepen the reading. As a public-domain electronic text, it is easy to search and compare, and suits close reading of the French original.

Who it's for

A good fit for

French majors or self-learners with intermediate to advanced French reading ability
Readers interested in late nineteenth-century French literature and themes of social critique
Researchers studying Darien and the lineage of French anarchist literature
Readers of serious fiction who enjoy ironic narration and do not require light plotting

Not a good fit for

Beginners in French, for whom the original is demanding and lacks annotations
Readers of genre fiction who prefer fast pacing and clear moral positions
First-time readers seeking a detailed introduction or background notes

Reading tips

Read the preface or look up Darien's life and historical context before starting the main text.
Keep a notebook to track shifts in the narrator's stance and targets of irony, to help map the themes.
Read alongside representative French social novels of the same period to observe differences in their modes of critique.
Readers with limited French are advised to read a translation or summary first, then return to close-read key chapters in the original.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book in the original French or a Chinese translation?

This is an electronic edition of the original French text released by Project Gutenberg; it contains no Chinese translation. Readers need some French reading ability, or should use a dictionary and other aids.

Can I read this directly without having read other works by Darien?

Yes. This is a standalone novel that does not depend on earlier works. But Darien's writing is strongly social-critical, and knowing something about late nineteenth-century French social and political background will make the text easier to enter.

What kind of reading approach suits this electronic edition?

A public-domain electronic text is easy to search and excerpt in full, making it suitable for close reading, note-taking, or sharing quotations with researchers. It also works well for assigning chapters and progressing gradually with background materials.

Comments

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About the author

Georges Darien (Georges Hippolyte Adrien) Author · French · 1862–1921

Georges Darien (1862–1921) was a French writer, born Georges Hippolyte Adrien in Paris, where he also died. He held firm anarchist and anti-militarist views, and his confinement in the North African penal colony known as "Biribi" gave rise to the novel of the same name. His other major works include Bas les coeurs!, L'épaulette and Le voleur, the last a bandit novel that satirizes society. Poor and neglected during his lifetime, he was rediscovered after the 1950s. Public information on his life and work is limited, yet his critique of militarism and social hypocrisy has earned him a place in French literary history.