André Paul Guillaume Gide (French: [ɑ̃dʁe pɔl ɡijom ʒid]; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author whose writing spanned a wide variety of styles and topics. He was awarded the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature. Gide's career ranged from his beginnings in the symbolist movement to criticising imperialism between the two World Wars. Author of more than 50 books, he was described in his New York Times obituary as "France's greatest contemporary man of letters" and "judged the greatest French writer of this century by the literary cognoscenti."

Known for his fiction as well as his autobiographical works, Gide expressed the conflict and eventual reconciliation of the two sides of his personality (characterized by a Protestant austerity and a transgressive sexual adventurousness, respectively). As a self-professed pederast, he used his writing to explore his struggle to be fully oneself, including owning one's sexual nature, without betraying one's values. His political activity was shaped by the same ethos. While sympathetic to Communism in the early 1930s, like many intellectuals, after his 1936 journey to the USSR he supported the anti-Stalinist left; during the 1940s he shifted towards more traditional values and repudiated Communism as an idea that breaks with the traditions of Christian civilization.

Gide was born in Paris on 22 November 1869 into a middle-class Protestant family. His father Jean Paul Guillaume Gide was a professor of law at University of Paris; he died in 1880, when the boy was 11 years old. His mother was Juliette Maria Rondeaux. His uncle was political economist Charles Gide. His paternal family traced its roots to Italy. The ancestral Guidos had moved to France and other western and northern European countries after converting to Protestantism during the 16th century and facing persecution in Catholic Italy.

Gide was brought up in isolated conditions in Normandy. He became a prolific writer at an early age, publishing his first novel, The Notebooks of André Walter (French: Les Cahiers d'André Walter), in 1891, at the age of 21.

In 1893 and 1894, Gide travelled in Northern Africa. There he came to accept his homosexuality.

Gide befriended Irish playwright Oscar Wilde in Paris, where the latter was in exile. In 1895 the two men met in Algiers. Wilde had the mistaken impression that he had introduced Gide to homosexuality, but Gide had already come to terms with his preferences.

In 1895, after his mother's death, Gide married his cousin Madeleine Rondeaux, but the marriage remained unconsummated. In 1896, he was elected mayor of La Roque-Baignard, a commune in Normandy.

Gide spent the summer of 1907 in Jersey, with friends Jacques Copeau and Théo van Rysselberghe and their families. He rented a room in La Valeuse Cottage in St Brelade. Whilst there he worked on the second chapter of Strait Is the Gate (French: La Porte étroite), and van Rysselberghe painted his portrait.