For Gary, literature was as a game in which he juggled the various episodes of his life, changing and moulding them, creating fictional stories, and presenting them as facts in his biography. Eventually, his literary stories intertwined with facts about his actual life to the extent that he decided to play the greatest trick of his life. He was motivated by gossip that spread among the milieu of Paris litterateurs. It was alleged that, after winning the Prix Goncourt for his piece “The Roots of Heaven” (Fr. Les Racines du ciel), his talent started to dwindle. Gary hired a relative to act as a deranged writer called Émile Ajar, and using his name Gary presented a new piece in 1975 “The Life Before Us” (Fr. La vie devant soi). The latter work brought Gary yet another Prix Goncourt award. The truth emerged only in the text “The Life and Death of Émile Ajar” (Fr. Vie et mort d'Émile Ajar) which was published only after the death of Gary. With this well-considered gamble Gary sought to stir the stagnant and closed off society of the Paris litterateurs who viewed Gary’s success with suspicion, and considered him a sentimental mediocrity who lacked expression. And they were proven wrong by Gary’s creation – Émile Ajar.