The Curtain Falls Author:Maurice Druon This is a great, sprawling, lusty family saga in the grand tradition. The scene is France and the time spans the period from the end of World War I to the eve of World War II. The novel deals with two of France's foremost families--one a great banking clan, the other, landed aristocrats. The structure and fabric of every aspect of French society... more » of the period--political, financial, moral--are revealed. The reader sees the rise and fall of cabinet ministers and governments; the rise and fall of businesses and banks; and most important, the moral and physical deterioration which ultimately and basically causes these downfalls.
Inevitably the delineation of these families will be taken as an allegorical explanation of what happened to France between the two World Wars and why France crumbled so quickly in 1940 when the Germans moved in. But whether or not the book is read in this light the story itself is a vast, gripping, inclusive journey into the innermost workings of a whole society, whose component parts are passed in review: its financiers, Academicians, fashionable doctors and hostesses, demi-mondaines, territorial magnates and politicians.
With this novel, Maurice Druon, who is best known in this country for his brilliant series of historical novels, THE ACCURSED KINGS, takes his place among the leading writers of his generation.« less