André Gide

André Gide (1869–1951) was a French novelist, essayist and diarist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947. Born in Paris to a Protestant family, he made his name with The Immoralist (1902), Strait Is the Gate (1909) and The Vatican Cellars (1914), and called The Counterfeiters (1926) his only true novel. A founder of the Nouvelle Revue Française, he shaped French letters for forty years through his criticism and his Journal. His Dostoevsky (1923), built from lectures given at the Vieux-Colombier, helped make the Russian central to modern French thought. Gide's openness about his homosexuality made him a figure of controversy throughout his life.