From the bestselling author of The Postcard and How To Be Parisian Wherever You Are , this unique book charts Françoise's Sagan journey to publication for her legendary novel, Bonjour Tristesse . 'Fascinating' Stylist Before Françoise Sagan the literary icon, there was Françoise Quoirez, an eighteen-year-old Parisian girl, who wrote a novel and needed a publisher for it. This intimate narrative details the months in 1954 leading up to the publication of the legendary Bonjour Tristesse. We encounter Françoise, her family and friends close up, in a post-war world that is changing radically; and Mlle Quoirez, in her new guise of Françoise Sagan, will be at the heart of that social change. Sagan was always focused on her writing, though at times the fame of her books was to be eclipsed by her wild-child reputation. Yet, as Anne Berest herself testifies, Sagan's fearless approach to life lived on her own terms remains an inspiration even now.

"Eric Hazan follows in Balzac's footsteps, criss-crossing the city in the novelist's outsize boots, running between printers, publishers, coffee merchants, mistresses and friends, stopping for a moment, struck by a detail that would be fixed in Balzac's photographic memory. More than a tour of the city, this is an attempt to measure the soul of a city as recovered in its finest literature"--

The only country in the world with a line in its national anthem as desperate as “this people has already suffered for its past and its future,” Hungary is a nation defined by poverty, despair, and conflict. Its history, of course, took an even darker and more tragic turn during the Holocaust. But the story of the Jews in Hungary is also one of survival, heroism, and even humor—and that is the one acclaimed author Adam Biro sets out to recover in One Must Also Be Hungarian , an inspiring and altogether poignant look back at the lives of his family members over the past two hundred years. A Hungarian refugee and celebrated novelist working in Paris, Biro recognizes the enormous sacrifices that his ancestors made to pave the way for his successes and the envious position he occupies as a writer in postwar Europe. Inspired, therefore, to share the story of his family members with his grandson, Biro draws some moving pictures of them here: witty and whimsical vignettes that convey not only their courageous sides, but also their inner fears, angers, jealousies, and weaknesses—traits that lend an indelible humanity to their portraiture. Spanning the turn of the nineteenth century, two destructive world wars, the dramatic rise of communism, and its equally astonishing fall, the stories here convey a particularly Jewish sense of humor and irony throughout—one that made possible their survival amid such enormous adversity possible. Already published to much acclaim in France, One Must Also Be Hungarian is a wry and compulsively readable book that rescues from oblivion the stories of a long-suffering but likewise remarkable and deservedly proud people.