Emmanuel Bove's 1924 novel Mes amis was translated by Janet Louth, originally in 1986, but has recently been re-issued by NYRB Classics. The novel opens:

When I wake up, my mouth is open. My teeth are furry: it would be better to brush them in the evening, but I am never brave enough. Tears have dried at the corner of my eyes. My shoulders do not hurt any more. Some stiff hair covers my forehead. I spread my fingers and push it back. It is no good: like the pages of a new book it springs up and tumbles over my eyes again. When I bow my head I can feel that my beard has grown: it pricks my neck.

Our narrator, Victor Bâton , is a first world war veteran, with a crippled left hand, living, in relative but not absolute poverty, on a 50% invalid's pension. His life is deliberately simple, living on meagre comforts so he doesn't have to work:

In that house full of working people. I was the madman that, deep down, everyone wanted to be. I was the one who went without food, the cinema, warm clothes, to be free. I was the one who, without meaning to, daily reminded people of their wretched state. People have not forgiven me for being free and for not being afraid of poverty.

But Victor craves one thing above everything else - friendship:

When you wander about all day without speaking to anyone, you feel so tired in your room in the evening.

and even when opportunities for conversation do arise, typically others take little interest in his rather pathetic figure:

Life is so miserable for someone who is alone and speaks only to those who take no interest in him.

Which makes him sympathetic to others in a similar situation, such as those that, 100 years ago as still today, are employed to hand out flyers in the street to typically disinterested passers-by:

I always accept what they offer me. I know that these men are not free until after they have distributed several thousand pieces of paper. People who pass contemptuously by these outstretched hands instead of taking what they have to offer annoy me.

The slim novel (150 pages) narrates the story of five of his 'friends', or at least five of his encounters that bore sufficient fruit to at least offer that hope. Yet typically Victor's pride limits his ability to accept charity from those in higher social classes, to befriend those he considers unworthy (one he lends money as a test to see how he spends it) or indeed make friends with a peer who then turns out to be, in some respect, in a more fortunate position than him. One promising acquaintance is nearly ended when the other man turns out to have a girlfriend:

We were not really friends. Somebody loved him.

with Victor's only hope that she is perhaps unattractive or has some other major fault (when she turns out to have a limp he can barely conceal his pleasure).

Brilliantly done - darkly humorous and also moving, bleak and yet hopeful. Recommended.