Description:
Colette was the pen name of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. She wrote a total of 50 novels in her career, and Chéri is considered her masterpiece. She is also famous for having written Gigi, which became a highly successful Broadway play and later a famous motion picture.
I think it is fair to say that every French person has read or at least heard of Colette. She had a very celebrated literary career and received many distinguished honors, including being named a Chevalier (1920) and a Grand Officier (1953) of the Légion d'honneur. She was also elected President of the Académie Goncourt (1949) (and was the first woman admitted i
Colette was the pen name of Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. She wrote a total of 50 novels in her career, and Chéri is considered her masterpiece. She is also famous for having written Gigi, which became a highly successful Broadway play and later a famous motion picture.
I think it is fair to say that every French person has read or at least heard of Colette. She had a very celebrated literary career and received many distinguished honors, including being named a Chevalier (1920) and a Grand Officier (1953) of the Légion d'honneur. She was also elected President of the Académie Goncourt (1949) (and was the first woman admitted into it in 1945), among other honors. She was born in 1873 in the Burgundy region of France and died in 1954 in Paris.
She was a liberated woman decades before that term was ever coined. As stated in Wikipedia, “All her novels were marked by clever observation and dialogue with an intimate, explicit style.” This is certainly true in Chéri which was originally published in 1920. There may have been many prudish people in the upper levels of Parisian society about 100 years ago, but you won’t find them in this novel.
A handsome, rich, and spoiled 19 year old young man, whose nickname was Chéri, takes a 43 year old family friend, Léa, who is in the finishing stages of her career as a happy and successful courtesan, as his mistress. This intimate relationship ends up lasting 7 years even though throughout most of that time Léa acted as if Chéri was just another “Passerby” in her life. One can imagine that this sort of situation might be expected to end explosively, especially since Chéri gets married at the age of 25, and … well, I will let readers enjoy the story themselves rather than spoiling it here in this description.
Although published almost a century ago, this book vividly describes human emotions that modern readers can very easily identify with on many levels. It was a fun book to translate, and I hope readers enjoy it. A film adaption was produced in 2009 under the title of Chéri starring Michelle Pfeiffer as Léa.
A word about format: I took the liberty of adding chapter numbers to the different sections of the book. The original in French did not have actual chapters but only sections that were separated like this,
……………..
after which the next section would begin.
In other words the whole book was one large string of text. This might be fine in a physical book where you can keep your place with a bookmark, but in a downloadable ebook, I think readers who lose their place will have an easier time finding it again with numbered chapters. I trust Colette would have approved had she known about downloadable ebooks and bookreaders.
Again, enjoy this delightful, funny, sad, outrageous, and in some ways, profound book.
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Manufacturer: Walter Ballenberger
Release date: 25 May 2014
ISBN-10 : B00KKQSDT4 |
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