# Fruits Of The Earth

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/andre-gide/fruits-of-the-earth/9780099437833

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- Book: [Fruits Of The Earth](https://www.bookquiver.com/andre-gide/fruits-of-the-earth) ([Fruits Of The Earth.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/andre-gide/fruits-of-the-earth.md))
- Authors: [André Gide](https://www.bookquiver.com/andre-gide)
- Publisher: vintage_classics
- ISBN: 978-00-9943-783-3
- Pages: 224
- Published: 2002-03-07
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Softcover

## Description

During the author's travels, he meets Menalcas, a caricature of Oscar Wilde, who relates his fantastic life story. But for all his brilliance, Menalcas is only Gide's yesterday self, a discarded wraith who leaves Gide free to stop exalting the ego and embrace bodily and spiritual joy. Later Fruits of the Earth, written in 1935 during Gide's short-lived spell of communism, reaffirms the doctrine of the earlier book. But now he sees happiness not as freedom, but a submission to heroism. In a series of 'Encounters', Gide describes a Negro tramp, a drowned child, a lunatic and other casualties of life. These reconcile him to suffering, death and religion, causing him to insist that 'today's Utopia' be 'tomorrow's reality'.