"Strait is the Gate," first published in 1909 in France as "La Porte etroite," is a novel about the failure of love in the face of the narrowness of the moral philosophy of Protestantism. --- Andr Gide (1869 - 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in literature in 1947. Gide's career spanned from the symbolist movement to the advent of anticolonialism in between the two World Wars. Gide's work can be seen as an investigation of freedom and empowerment in the face of moralistic and puritan constraints, and gravitates around his continuous effort to achieve intellectual honesty. His self-exploratory texts reflect his search of how to be fully oneself, without at the same time betraying one's values... --- "For Gide was very different from the picture most people had of him. He was the very reverse of an aesthete, and, as a writer, had nothing in common with the doctrine of art for art's sake. He was a man deeply involved in a specific struggle, a specific fight, who never wrote a line which he did not think was of service to the cause he had at heart." (Francois Mauriac)

安德烈·紀德（1869-1951），法國作傢，齣生於巴黎，一八九一年發錶第一部小說，開始寫作生涯。一九〇九年參與創辦《新法蘭西評論》。一九四七年獲諾貝爾文學奬。代錶作有小說《背德者》、《窄門》、《田園交響麯》、《梵蒂岡地窖》、《僞幣製造者》，散文《地糧》、《剛果之行》等。

紀德是現代西方文學史、思想史上的重要人物。他廣泛關注宗教、愛情、傢庭、性、政治等各類問題，熱烈歌吟解放與自由，以赤誠之心去擔當人性中的最大可能。他是時代的見證人，更是時代的創造者，法國文壇的後起之秀如薩特、加繆等，都曾將紀德視為自己的精神導師。同時，紀德也稱得上二十世紀最具爭議、最令人費解的作傢之一。他的“縱情”、他的“顛覆”，曾一度使他“聲名狼藉”；但另一方麵，他內心中同樣真摯的是一種對於“神聖生活”的需要的肯定。他對同性戀的辯護、在道德倫理上的特彆主張至今仍是人們關注和討論的焦點。

譯者桂裕芳（1930- ），湖北武漢人。北京大學法語係教授，著名翻譯傢。獲法國教育部頒發的教育勛章。譯著主要有：普魯斯特《追憶似水年華》（第二捲）、雨果《九三年》、薩特《嘔吐》、布托《變》、莫裏亞剋《愛的荒漠》等。