Albert t'Serstevens's Un apostolat (1919; repr. with Afterword by Jean-Pierre Martinet (2018))

This fascinating little-known novel by the little-known Albert t'Serstevens has a sixty-six page Afterword by the also little-known (but more than a little fascinating) writer Jean-Pierre Martinet, whose 1980 masterpiece Jérôme is still (criminally) largely unknown even by French readers.

Here, the converts to the vegetarian life free from social and political constraints at first meet in the Restaurant Cérès: there's Pascal Marin, the older Chapelle, Krabelinckx (modelled on t'Serstevens himself, and a partial renegade who sneaks home to eat fried sausages), Firmin Lhommel, the poet Verd, etc. Anarchists, they form a utopian cummune named Cité Kropotkine but it doesn't stay a utopia for long. Plagued by infighting and huge theft by con merchant Botrou, the ideal ends with Lhommel's suicide and the collapse of the dream.

The second part of the book sees Pascal in London, which is to say the least a disappointment to him, and he spends his last weeks there living with the mysterious Déa, who may be a kind of prostitute but who knows? Returning alone to Paris, Pascal writes a pamphlet before becoming smitten by Lucienne, who lives in luxury and whose often absent but understanding husband Cunard is a financier. End of Pascal's egalitarian ideals.