Like many of his novels, Le mausolée des amants. Journal 1976 - 1991 by the French author Hervé Guibert is a fictionalized account, in this case in the form of a diary. A disturbing feature of the book is that there are no dated diary entries. The book consists of a large number of short and medium-length entries, as in a real diary, but without dates the structure of the text and time of events remains relatively obscure. While fictionalized, the work relates to reality, and elements and people from Guibert's life may realistically feature in the Journal. For instance, there are regular references to the Belgian author Eugène Savitzkaya, with whom Hervé Guibert corresponded for a more than 10-year period overlapping the course of the journal, viz. Lettres à Eugène. Correspondance 1977-1987. Le mausolée des amants. Journal 1976 - 1991 is a chronicle of the AIDS epidemic and Guibert's personal drama. It is difficult to decide to what extent the Journal is fictionalized, and how this affects the described events. Thus, the work is strongly lacking in personal appeal, and is as much a diary as a novellistic piece of prose.

Le mausolée des amants. Journal 1976 - 1991 appeared post-humously in 2001. The Journal starts in 1976, and ends in 1991, the year in which Guibert died of AIDS. The period 1976 - 1991 appears to be the period during which Guibert was active as an author, and in that sense the work pertains to the persona of the author as the author appears in his semi-autobiographical, or fictionalzed work. Guibert was diagnosed with HIV / AIDS in 1988. ( )