The Counterfeiters

<b>''It''s only after our death that we shall really be able to hear'' </b>The measured tone of hopeless nihilism that pervades The Counterfeiters quickly shatters any image of André Gide as the querulous and impious Buddha to a quarter-century of intellectuals. In sharp and brilliant prose a seedy, cynical and gratuitously alarming narrative is developed, involving a wide range of otherwise harmless and mainly middle-to-upper-class Parisians. But the setting could be anywhere. From puberty through adolescence to death, <i>The Counterfeiters</i> is a rare encyclopedia of human disorder, weakness and despair.