A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle class France. Novel by Andre Gide, published in French in 1926 as Les Faux-Monnayeurs . Constructed with a greater range and scope than his previous short fiction, The Counterfeiters is Gide's most complex and intricately plotted work. It is a novel within a novel, concerning the relatives and teachers of a group of schoolboys who are subjected to corrupting influences both in and out of the classroom. In a progression of unconnected scenes and events, the novel approximates the texture of daily life. Schoolboys of diverse ages and dispositions attend the Pension Azais. Some are suspected of having attempted to circulate counterfeit coins. Edouard, an author writing a novel entitled The Counterfeiters , observes that if a counterfeit coin is thought to be authentic, it is accepted as valuable; if it is found to be counterfeit, it is perceived as worthless. Therefore, he concludes, value is wholly a matter of perception and has nothing to do with reality. The counterfeiters are thus representative of those who disguise themselves with false personalities, either in unconscious self-deception or through conscious, hypocritical conformity to convention. -- The Merriam-Webster Encylopedia of Literature A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle class France. A young artist pursues a search for knowledge through the treatment of homosexuality and the collapse of morality in middle class France. André Gide was born in Paris in 1869 and died there in 1951. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1947. His works include  The Immoralist, The Counterfeiters, Strait is the Gate,  the autobiography  If It Die . . . ,  and three volumes of  Journals.  He also wrote plays, essays, short stories, and books of travel.