Henri Troyat

The 100th birthday of French writer Henri Troyat
(the pen-name of Lev Tarassov) (1911–2007)

The exhibition devoted to the 100th anniversary of Henri Troyat, the French writer, historian, thinker, member of French Academy, includes about 80 documents: novels (psychological, biographic, historical), short stories, stories and essays.

Writer and historian, researcher and educator Henri Troyat, whose work and personality combined Russian and French cultures, left a unique heritage in modern world literature.

Henri Troyat devoutly admired the genius of the classics of Russian and French literature. Scrupulously studied and emotionally experienced biographies of the “Great Individuals" were embodied in original literary portraits of A.S. Pushkin, N.V. Gogol, I.S. Turgenev, F.M .Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov, M. Gorky, M. Tsvetaeva, B. Pasternak, Honore de Balzac, Guy de Maupassant, Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola. The exposition presents the series of H. Troyat’s bibliographical novels translated into Russian “Russian Biographies”, “Russian Portraits in Literature”, “Novel-Biography”.

His historical essays about Russian rulers are based on the study of a great number of archival documents, written sources and oral evidence: “Ivan the Terrible”, “Catherine the Great”, “Peter the Great”, “Alexander the First, or the Northern Sphinx”, “Alexander II”, “Alexander III” etc.

H. Troyat’s debut novel “Faux Jour” (“Deceptive Light") was released in 1935 by the French publishing house “PLON” and at once won the populist novel prize. The novel “Faux Jour” in Russian is represented at the exposition by the edition of 1991.

The collection of rare books of the National Library of Belarus includes the first edition of the novel “Spider”– “Henry Troyat. L’Araigne. – Paris: PLON, 1938” with an autograph. Henry Troyat was awarded with prestigious Goncourt Prize for this work. The exhibition presents a photocopy of the title-page of the edition and the photocopy of a list with an autograph.

In 1940 Henry Troyat wrote the novel “Judith Madrier” dedicated to human responsibility and moral issues caused by the war. The French edition of 1940 is on display.

Henry Troyat’s collections “Le fils du ciel” and “L’Eternel contretemps” acquaint the reader with extravagant short stories of the known French writer marked with an uncommon imagination, humor, the depth of a psychological portrait, in which the mysticism and the daily routine are gracefully intertwined.

Henry Troyat’s impressing memoirs "Un si long chemin” regarded by literary critics as one of the most significant prosaic works of the master of literature are published in the pages of the literary and art magazine "Дружба народов” (“Friendship of Peoples”).