ArchivesSpace at the University of Iowa

Scope and Contents Internet Peter Baker's translation of introduction: During the last week of August 1939, while rumors of war invaded Paris, a young literature professor, Vincent Degrael, was invited to spend several days at a property in the neighborhood of le Havre that belonged to the parents of one of his colleagues, Denis Borrade. The eve of his departure, while he was exploring the library of his hosts searching for one of the books that one has always promised oneself to read, but which one generally only has time to flip through the pages negligently next to the fire before going to make up the fourth at bridge, Degrael fell upon a slim volume entitled The Winter Voyage, whose author, Hugo Vernier, was absolutely unknown to him, but the first pages of which made such a strong impression on him that he barely took the time to excuse himself from his friend and his hosts before going to read it in his room. The Winter Voyage was a sort of first-person narrative, situated in a...