Chaos and Night (New York Review Books Classics) - Softcover

"A magnificent novel of a type that only Montherlant could produce...The author's feat in embodying much of himself in such an exceptional creation wile maintaining his customary austerity of view an of style, his almost frightening insolence and is extraordinary gift for characterization evoke...admiration." -New York Times Book Review

"Indisputably a magnificent writer." -Saturday Review

"Written with intense control and beautifully translated, Chaos and Night is one of those rare explorations of the place where political commitment, religious faith, illusion and necessity intersect, where morality and mortality come to terms." -The New York Times

"Wry and likeable" -Time

"Admired by such as Malraux, Camus, Graham Greene and Peter Quennell...[and] one of the few French dramatists worthy of ranking with Corneille and Racine...This is a magnificent novel of a type that only he could produce...Henry de Montherlant will live as one of the outstanding writers of the century." -The New York Times

"Well rendered in English by Terence Kilmartin." -The New York Review of Books

Don Celestino is old and bitter and afraid. In exile from his native Spain for more than twenty years, he lives with his daughter in Paris, but in his mind he is still fighting the Spanish Civil War.
Don Celestino's daughter has had enough. She decides to return to Spain, and reluctantly, helplessly, he tags along. Now he foresees a last heroic confrontation with his enemies; he wonders whether he will be worthy. Instead he encounters a new commercialized Spain that has no time for the past, much less for him. Or so it seems.
One of the great characters of twentieth-century fiction, a lost soul who is, in spite of everything, the essence of whatever honor may be, Don Celestino is an unparalleled modern reincarnation of the spirit of Don Quixote and a triumph of Henry de Montherlant's caustic and compassionate art.