The Fall

In a shady bar in Amsterdam, the man who does the talking in The Fall is indulging in a calculated confession. He recalls his past life as a respected Parisian lawyer, a pleader of noble causes, secure in his self-esteem, privately a libertine, yet apparently immune to judgment - the portrait of a modern Man. The irony of the recital predicts the downfall. Inescapable, it comes in the narrator's intense discovery, in the space of one terrible and unforgettable instant, that no man is innocent and no man may therefore judge others from a standpoint of righteousness. Translated by Justin O'Brien.