Romains first appeared in English as a medical researcher, with his scientific work Eyeless Sight: A Study of Extra-Retinal Vision and the Paroptic Sense (1923). His first novel, The Death of a Nobody (1911), is still considered by many his masterpiece. The serial novel Men of Good Will begins in 1933, with its political unrest recalling the sixth of October 1908, six years before World War I, the day on which the first volume opens. The narrative combines imaginary events with historical, and fictitious characters with actual. This epic novel, with its vast canvas and mass of characters, is an expression of the author's "unanimist" conception of life, a theory that defines society through the individual's relation to masses or groups and contends that a group of people with a unanimous emotion (such as goodwill) can develop a mass power superior to any other force. Romains was international president of PEN from 1938 to 1941 and was elected to the French Academy in 1946.
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