Monsieur Teste

A defining work of twentieth-century modernism, now newly translated—a philosophical novel about the nature of consciousness, all centered around a character who is composed of absolute brain and intellect, a character of pure mind.

In 1892, during an intense thunderstorm, the great Symbolist poet Paul Valéry underwent an existential crisis. For the next twenty years, he wrote no poetry, devoting himself instead to the study of philosophy, mathematics, and language—and to the creation of hi...