A Living Lie

A Living Lie is the English translation of Mensonges, the 1887 novel by Paul Bourget (1852-1935), the French psychological novelist and academician. The book follows a poor and talented young playwright drawn into the glittering Parisian world by his love for a fashionable married woman, whose web of lies about her past and her other attachments slowly poisons his idealism and nearly destroys him. Bourget anatomises the lies of love, of society, and of self-deception with the clinical method that made him the leading analyst of the Parisian heart in the late nineteenth century. Mensonges was among his most successful novels and confirmed the psychological school he led against naturalism. The book influenced the young Marcel Proust, who attended Bourget’s circle. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.