Tombeau pour 500 000 soldats
Discovered by Editions du Seuil, Pierre Guyotat’s third book, Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats, was refused by the publisher.
The violence of the text, partly inspired by the author’s own experience as a soldier in Algeria, as well as the possibility of legal consequences, were the publisher’s motivations.
War, Antiquity, slavery, prostitution, crime and incest are the elements of a text to which Guyotat gave an innovating literary form at the price of considerable effort.
The book, published by Gallimard in 1967, created a scandal on publication.
After an opinion from the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris in January 1968, the Supervisory Committee proceeded to examine the book.
The arguments in defence of the book made by the publisher’s representatives, who included Jérôme Lindon, limited the Supervisory Committee’s decision to a simple ban on sales to minors.