Nobel Prize in Literature. Roger Martin du Gard , a French author, received notoriety after being awarded the 1937 Nobel Prize in Literature, and according to the Nobel Prize committee, "for the artistic power and truth with which he has depicted human conflict as well as some fundamental aspects of contemporary life in his novel-cycle ‘Les Thibault’." He received five nominations for the Nobel candidacy. His work explored the moral and intellectual dilemmas of his generation. His "Les Thibaults", an eight-novel series, was published between 1922 and 1940. Together they comprise a monumental picture of pre-World War I France as seen through the eyes of the middle-class Thibault brothers, one dutiful and conservative, the other rebellious; their conflicting values are ultimately rendered futile when both die in the war. Martin du Gard was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine. He attended two of the finest Paris lycees and, in 1906, graduated from the École des Chartes with a thesis on an archaeological subject and with the degree of archivist-paleographer. He spent most of World War I on the front lines with the French Army, but his essentially pessimistic outlook was already in place when his first novel, "Jean Barois", appeared in 1913. Much of his other work is lighter in tone, such as the satirical novel "The Postman" in 1933 and his stage farces "The Testament of Old Luleu" in 1914 and "La Gonfle" in 1928. He is remembered for the memoirs of his close colleague, Andre Gide, the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient, the book was published in 1951. In 1941 he began work on “Le Journal du colonel de Maumort,” a vast novel that he hoped would prove to be his masterpiece, but it was still unfinished at his death, yet later edited and published posthumously in 1983. His complete works were issued in 1955 in two volumes. He married in 1906 and the couple had a daughter before they divorced.