Le Diable au Corps: Roman

by Raymond Radiguet

"Le Diable au Corps: Roman" by Raymond Radiguet is a novel published in March 1923. It tells the story of a forbidden love affair between a fifteen-year-old schoolboy and an eighteen-year-old married woman whose husband fights at the front during World War I. The novel explores themes of adolescence, passion, betrayal, adultery, and possessive desire amid the social disruption of wartime France. Radiguet's scandalous debut caused outrage for depicting the war as "four years of vacation" and suggesting it enabled the lovers' happiness—a perspective that shocked veterans and the public alike.