Devil in the Flesh

In this novel of desire, possession and perdition, an unnamed adolescent narrator meets the slightly older Marthe in Paris at the start of the First World War when her husband-to-be is away at the Front. The narrator is at a loose end - precocious and apathetic, he has given up school, and in the general chaos of wartime no occupation has been found for him. At first out of boredom, he sets about gaining a hold on Marthe, but finds himself falling deeper in love.They plunge into an affair, full of sensual pleasure and cruel power games. But as their ill-kept secret becomes widely known - and when Marthe falls pregnant - the consequences of their heedlessness begin to unfold. Freedom and passion are confronted by convention and martial honour, with tragic repercussions.This scandalous, sexy novel rocketed its teenage author into overnight fame when it was published in the 1920s - and was all the more shocking because it was based on his own experiences during the war. Its incredible success and the flamboyant antics of its author foretold a brilliant career, but Radiguet died a few months after publication, aged only twenty.

Raymond Radiguet (1903-1923) entered Parisian literary society with a bang when The Devil in the Flesh was published. Only eighteen at the time, he became the star of an unprecedented publicity campaign and earned copious praise and censure for his precocious talent and scandalous behaviour - the more so as the novel was based on his own wartime affair with a soldier's wife. A protégé and perhaps lover of Jean Cocteau, he fraternized with artists, dancers and aristocrats, drank heavily, and generally ran riot, before settling down for a brief period, during which he wrote one more novel, Count d'Orgel, also published by Pushkin Press. Shortly after the manuscript was completed, he contracted typhoid fever and died within a few weeks, aged only twenty. He is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.