Mauriac Accepts the Nobel Prize in Literature.

At first glance, it might seem surprising for the Swedish Academy to have chosen François Mauriac for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1952, because Mauriac’s strong commitment to Roman Catholicism and his novels exploring conflicts between Catholics and atheists seemed out of touch with literary movements such as existentialism that dominated French literature in the 1940’s and 1950’s. After deeper consideration, however, the choice of the Swedish Academy made perfect sense, because Mauriac’s well-crafted and elegantly written novels explored such eternal themes as the reality of evil in the world and the amorality of people who rely on specious or fallacious reasoning in order to justify their selfish and exploitative actions.