Édouard Rod

Who was Édouard Rod?

Édouard Rod, a French-Swiss novelist.

He was born at Nyon, in Switzerland, studied at Lausanne, where he wrote his doctoral thesis about the Oedipus legend, and Berlin, and in 1878 found his way to Paris.

In 1881 he dedicated his novel, Palmyre Veulard, to Zola, of whom he was at this period of his career a faithful disciple. A series of novels of similar tendency followed. In 1884 he became editor of the Revue contemporaine, and in 1887 succeeded Marc Monnier as professor of comparative literature at Geneva, where he remained until 1893.

La Course de la mort marks a turning-point in his career: in it he forsook the so-called naturalistic novel for the analysis of moral motives. He is at his best in presenting cases of conscience, the struggle between passion and duty, and the virtues of renunciation. Le Sens de la vie, one of his most famous books, is in the nature of a complement to La Course de la mort.