Jean Christophe by Romain Rolland (Modern Library)

Hardcover. Condition: Very Good-, Dust Jacket; Fair. 1938. Modern Library.

Romain Rolland's masterpiece that won him the Prix Femina in 1905 and Nobel Prize in Literature in 1915. The central character, Jean-Christophe Krafft, is a German musician of Belgian extraction, a composer of genius whose life is depicted from cradle to grave. He undergoes great hardships and spiritual struggles, balancing his pride in his own talents with the necessity of earning a living and taking care of those around him. Tormented by injustices against his friends, forced to flee on several occasions as a result of his brushes with authority and his own conscience, he finally finds peace in a remote corner of Switzerland before returning in triumph to Paris a decade later.