Georges Duhamel

roman fleuve, the French term for a novel sequence. The practice of pursuing a family story through a number of related novels in order to render a comprehensive account of a social period ultimately derives from Balzac and Zola, but it reached its culmination between 1900 and 1940 in the works of Romain Rolland (1866–1944), Roger Martin du Gard (1881–1958), Georges Duhamel (1884–1966), and Jules Romains (1885–1972). Translations of these works have been popular in England, but the English version of the phenomenon, descending from Trollope and including such novelists as Galsworthy, C. P. Snow, and A. Powell, has not had the same consistency of purpose.

Georges Duhamel , 1884-1966, French novelist and playwright. From Duhamel's experience as a surgeon during World War I came Vie des martyrs (1917, tr. The New Book of Martyrs, 1918) and Civilisation (1918, tr. 1919). These collections of sketches are noted for their compassionate accounts of human suffering. He was successful as a dramatist; his Dans l'ombre des statues was performed in 1912 (tr. In the Shadow of Statues, 1914) and L'oeuvre des athlètes in 1920. His fiction includes two cycles of novels— Cycle de Salavin (1920-32, tr. 1936), about a sensitive eccentric, and Chronique des Pasquiers (1933-45, tr. 1937-46), about a bourgeois Parisian family. Essays in Scènes de la vie future (1930, tr. America: the Menace, 1931) and other collections reflect Duhamel's aversion to overindustrialization.

Bibliography: See studies by L. C. Keating (1965) and B. L. Knapp (1972).