Le martyre de l'obèse

First edition, one of 75 numbered copies on pure laid paper, the only deluxe-paper copies offered for sale (5 copies on Japan paper and 10 on Dutch handmade paper were also printed hors commerce; cf. Pierrette & Georges Dupont, Bibliographie des écrits d'Henri Béraud).
A rare and attractive copy with full margins of the author's masterpiece.

Le martyre de l'obèse, whose « bon gros » narrator is subjected to the salacious confidences of a petit-bourgeois couple in disarray, occupies a unique place in the history of the Prix Goncourt: in 1922, the Académie jointly honoured this novel and Le Vitriol de lune, published the previous year by the same publisher, thus making Béraud the recipient of a double Goncourt, a distinction that remains without parallel in the history of the prize. 

This irreverent, sharp-tongued novel is still regarded as the crowning achievement of Béraud's work.