Novel: The Counterfeiters

Overview
André Gide’s The Counterfeiters (1925) intertwines the lives of Parisian adolescents, their families, and a circle of writers to explore authenticity, moral duplicity, and the forging of identity. It is at once a realist panorama and a self-reflexive experiment: one of its central characters, the novelist Edouard, is himself composing a book titled The Counterfeiters, and his journal periodically interrupts the narrative. The result is a layered portrait of youth and mentorship, art and manipulation, where literal counterfeiting of coins mirrors the forging of selves, feelings, and reputations.

Plot
The story opens with Bernard Profitendieu discovering a letter that reveals he is illegitimate. Feeling deceived by the magistrate who raised him and by his mother, he walks out, writes a scathing farewell, and casts himself on chance. He finds refuge with his friend Olivier Molinier and soon meets Olivier’s mentor, Edouard. Drawn to the writer’s intelligence and magnetism, Bernard becomes his secretary, while Olivier, vulnerable and impressionable, struggles with jealousy and desire.

Olivier’s older brother, Vincent, provides a cynical counterpoint. Charming and opportunistic, he drifts between affairs and schemes, leaving compromised relationships behind him. His seduction of a married woman and the consequences that follow expose the costs of self-indulgence and the devastating ripple effects of betrayal. At the same time, Olivier falls under the sway of Robert de Passavant, a fashionable man of letters whose smooth influence and literary salon promise entrée into a glamorous world. Passavant’s patronage, however, proves predatory and calculating, setting him in rivalry with Edouard for Olivier’s allegiance.

Running through these entanglements is a network of schoolboys circulating counterfeit gold pieces. What begins as a prank among adolescents grows into a motif of moral contagion: small falsifications proliferate into larger ones, and the adult world proves no more genuine than the boys’ mischief. A tragic climax arrives at a grand party where a revolver, presented as harmless for a theatrical demonstration, kills a child when a real bullet is substituted. The shock lays bare the era’s hypocrisies, of charity, of artistic pose, of parental concern, and deepens the novel’s meditation on innocence imperiled by adult duplicity.

By the end, Bernard reassesses his anger and partially reconciles with the household he fled, tempered by experience and by Edouard’s example of rigorous self-scrutiny. Olivier turns away from Passavant’s glittering corruption and gravitates back toward Edouard, though the bonds they forge remain fraught with ambiguity. The counterfeit coin ring is exposed and dispersed, yet the larger question of what counts as genuine in art and life remains unresolved.

Form and Perspective
Gide alternates third-person chapters with excerpts from Edouard’s journal, allowing the book to comment on its own making. Scenes are presented from shifting angles; letters, notes, and recollections revise earlier impressions. The interplay of novel and novel-within-the-novel erodes the boundary between story and critique, highlighting how selection, framing, and desire shape any claim to truth.

Themes
Counterfeiting operates literally and metaphorically: spurious coins, deceptive poses, borrowed opinions, and misdirected affections all test the characters’ capacity for sincerity. Adolescence is treated as a crucible where identities are minted, often under the stamp of mentors whose motives may be generous, erotic, or exploitative. Freedom clashes with family duty; artistic integrity clashes with fashionable success; moral law clashes with the demands of desire. Gide leaves knots untied, not to frustrate, but to insist that authenticity is a moving target, something to be forged patiently, under pressure, and always at risk of alloy.