At his best, Louis Guilloux was one of the finest French novelists of the twentieth century. Despite strong championing by such writers as André Malraux and Albert Camus, he has failed to receive widespread recognition and, because of his firm Breton base, has been regarded as a loner and a marginal. Guilloux in Breton means little devil. In his memoirs he speaks of himself as "ce petit dieu rieur, vigoureux, invulnérable, caché à tous" (this mocking, robust, invulnerable, invisible little deity), and so perhaps his peripheral status suits him. At the same time, few French writers have reviewed their navels less than Guilloux; he was unusually cosmopolitan in his receptivity.

Louis Guilloux was born the son of a militant shoemaker, Louis Guilloux, who helped to found the Socialist section in Saint-Brieuc. His mother was Philomène Marmier Guilloux. He grew up immersed in...