This study explores the little examined links between the fiction of Joseph Conrad and André Gide. It encompasses a range of texts belonging to the early modernist period in English and French Literature, focusing upon two of its most important representatives. Using theories drawn from psychoanalysis, translation studies and intertextuality, the book traces the process by which Gide developed his own writing and fictional ethics against the example set by a foreign writer, Conrad. The antagonistic relationship of the disciple with his mentor is examined in a series of comparative readings of novels by the two writers. The core of the study focuses upon the translation of Conrad's Typhoon which Gide completed during the First World War.