Fiction. Translated from the French by Robert Baldrick. "Every simile is flawlessly keyed....the book sweeps away life's illusions..."—The New Republic.
A novel, translated by Robert Baldick. A young man staying in a Paris boarding house finds a hole in the wall above his bed. Alternately voyeur and seer, he obsessively studies the private moments and secret activities of his neighbors: childbirth, first love, marriage, betrayal, illness and death all present themselves to him through this spy hole. Decades ahead of its time, "Hell" shocked and scandalized the reviewing public when first released in English in 1866. Even so, the New Republic praised "the beauty of the book's nervous yet fluid rhythms...The book sweeps, away life's illusions."
Henri Barbusse (1873-1935) was a French novelist and active member of the French Communist Party. A WWI veteran, Barbusse became popular upon the 1916 release of his first novel, Le Feu. Later, he moved to Moscow and joined the Bolshevik Party, spending the rest of his life in the Soviet Union and France.
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