The Devil in the Flesh

François, the adolescent narrator, meets Marthe at the start of the First World War. While her husband is away at the Front, they fall deeply in love — with tragic consequences. Set in wartime and post-war Paris, The Devil in the Flesh debates the ever-contemporary battle between individual freedom and convention, passion and honour. Written when the author was still a teenager, and following his own love-affair with a married woman, the novel was considered highly scandalous upon its publication in 1923.