François, the adolescent narrator, meets Marthe at the start of the First World War. While her husband is away at the Front, they fall deeply in love – with tragic consequences. Set in wartime and post-war Paris, The Devil in the Flesh debates the ever-contemporary battle between individual freedom and convention, passion and honour. Written when the author was still a teenager, and following his own love-affair with a married woman, the novel was considered highly scandalous upon its publication in 1923.