A Happy Death

V865. Tight spine has some subtle creasing. Clean, unmarked interior. Some moderate to heavy edge-wear and bumped corners. First published in Paris in 1971 by Éditions Gallimard as La mort heureuse. Afterword and notes by Jean Sarocchi. Cover photo by R. Corbineau. 'And stone among the stones,' ends this novel, often seen as a prototype of The Stranger (its protagonist's name, Mersault, is just one vowel short of Meursault), 'he returned in the joy of his heart to the truth of the motionless worlds.' A Happy Death was written between 1936 and 1938, but didn't see print until more than 30 years later, when Galllimard posthumously released it as the first in a series of the French absurdist's previously unpublished cahiers. The Grove edition's English translator Richard Howard, who shared his New York apartment with a large stuffed gorilla named Mildred, became more openly gay as he aged, once causing W. H. Auden to remark upon hearing Howard take offense at another poet's use of gay and Jewish slurs, 'My dear, I never knew you were Jewish!' 192 pp.