Françoise Sagan

Cécile leads a hedonistic, frivolous life with her father and his young mistresses. On holiday in the South of France, she is seduced by the sun, the sand and her first lover. But when her father decides to remarry, their carefree existence becomes clouded by tragedy. United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love's endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love, not to mention lost love, twisted and obsessional love . . .

Bonjour Tristesse

Published when she was only nineteen, Fran�oise Sagan's astonishing first novel Bonjour Tristessebecame an instant bestseller. It tells the story of C�cile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until, one hot summer on the Riviera, he decides to remarry - with devastating consequences. In A Certain SmileDominique, a young woman bored with her lover, begins an encounter with an older man that unfolds in unexpected and troubling ways. These two acerbically witty and delightfully amoral tales about the nature of love are shimmering masterpieces of cool-headed, brilliant observation.

A Certain Smile

Bonjour Tristesse is Françoise Sagan's stylish, shimmering and amoral tale of adolescence and betrayal on the French Riviera, published when its author was just eighteen years old. It tells the story of Cécile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until, one hot summer on the Riviera, he decides to remarry - with devastating consequences. In A Certain Smile, which is also included in this volume, Dominique, a young woman bored with her lover, begins an encounter with an older man that unfolds in unexpected and troubling ways. Both novellas have been freshly translated by Heather Lloyd and include an introduction by Rachel Cusk. Françoise Sagan was born in France in 1935. Bonjour tristesse (1954), published when she was just eighteen, became a succès de scandale and even earned its author a papal denunciation. Sagan went on to write many other novels, plays and screenplays, and died in 2004. Heather Lloyd was previously Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Glasgow, and has published work on both Bonjour tristesse and Françoise Sagan. Rachel Cusk is the author of Saving Agnes (1993), which won the Whitbread First Novel Award; A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother (2001); and Arlington Park (2006), shortlisted for the 2007 Orange Prize for Fiction. Her most recent book is Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation (2012). 'Funny, thoroughly immoral and thoroughly French' The Times

Bonjour Tristesse and A Certain Smile

That Mad Ache, set in high-society Paris in the mid-1960's, recounts the emotional battle unleashed in the heart of Lucile, a sensitive but rootless young woman who finds herself caught between her carefree, tranquil love for 50-year-old Charles, a gentle, reflective, and well-off businessman, and her sudden wild passion for 30-year-old Antoine, a hot-blooded, impulsive, and struggling editor. As Lucile explores these two versions of love, she vacillates in confusion, but in the end she must choose, and her heart's instinct is surprising and poignant. Originally published under the title La Chamade, this new translation by Douglas Hofstadter returns a forgotten classic to English. In Translator, Trader, Douglas Hofstadter reflects on his personal act of devotion in rewriting Francoise Sagan's novel La Chamade in English, and on the paradoxes that constantly plague any literary translator on all scales, ranging from the humblest of commas to entire chapters. Flatly rejecting the common wisdom that translators are inevitably traitors, Hofstadter proposes instead that translators are traders, and that translation, like musical performance, deserves high respect as a creative act. In his view, literary translation is the art of making subtle trades in which one sometimes loses and sometimes gains, often both losing and gaining at the same time. This view implies that there is no reason a translation cannot be as good as the original work, and that the result inevitably bears the stamp of the translator, much as a musical performance inevitably bears the stamp of its artists. Both a companion to the beloved Sagan novel and a singular meditation on translation, Translator, Trader is a witty and intimate exploration of words, ideas, communication, creation, and faithfulness.

A Novel

That Mad Ache

Aimez Vous Brahms?

رواية

صباح الخير أيها الحزن

En una hermosa mansión a orillas del Mediterráneo, Cécile, una joven de diecisiete años, y su padre, viudo y cuarentón, pero alegre, frívolo y seductor como nadie, amante de las relaciones amorosas breves y sin consecuencias, viven felices, despreocupados, entregados a la vida fácil y placentera. No necesitan a nadie más, se bastan a sí mismos en una ociosa y disipada independencia basada en la complicidad y el respeto mutuo. Un día, la visita de Anne, una mujer inteligente, culta y serena, viene a perturbar aquel delicioso desorden. A la sombra del pinar que rodea la casa y filtra el sol abrasador del verano, un juego cruel se prepara.

Buenos días, tristeza

Aimez-vous Brahms... Roman

مرحبا أيها الحزن

Les jeunes filles découvrent souvent l'amour auprès des hommes de quarante ans. Dominique préparait ses examens et s'ennuyait doucement avec un garçon lorsqu'elle rencontra Luc. À la seconde même, elle pensa : "Il me plaît. Il est un peu vieux et il me plaît." Luc était marié, beau et déjà un peu las de la vie. Plus tard, il lui proposa de passer avec lui deux semaines de vacances à Cannes, "pour lui apprendre la mer, l'argent et une certaine forme de liberté"." Qu'est-ce que tu risques ? De t'attacher à moi, de souffrir, après ? Mais quoi ? Ça vaut mieux que de t'ennuyer. Tu aimes mieux être heureuse et malheureuse que rien, non ?" Et Dominique répondit :" Évidemment. "Mais déjà, dans l'attente des plaisirs, des imaginations et des regrets, elle ne s'ennuyait plus du tout.

Un certain sourire

An Unfinished Novel

The Four Corners of the Heart

The Ritz was the answer to every gigolo's dream' The early promise of love gives way to ennui and disillusionment in these stories from the author of Bonjour Tristesse.

The Gigolo

Hal tuḥibbīn "Brāmz"?

Hoşgeldin hüzün

"Gilles Lantier is thirty-five, attractive, with a beautiful mistress and a job in Paris as a journalist. He seems to have all that life can offer. But suddenly he is overwhelmed by despair. Nothing seems worth while. In panic at his boredom, and hating Eloïse, his model girlfriend, he flees for some peace to his sister and her dull husband in the provinces. Here he meets Nathalie, the wife of a country lawyer. She falls deeply in love with him, a passion to which he soon responds. But back in Paris her innate goodness contrasts oddly with the frivolity of Gilles's life. Soon it seems as if their relationships is doomed, as if their happiness is a mere gleam of sunlight on cold water" -- p. [4] of cover.

Sunlight on Cold Water

Wonderful Clouds

En let humoristisk skildring af det overfladiske liv i Hollywood, hvor alt styres af penge og sex.

roman

Le Garde du cœur

Chateau en Suede

Paru en 1959 Paule passe difficilement du rang de jeune femme au rang de femme jeune. Délaissée par son amant, adorée par un jeune homme de quinze ans son cadet, elle s’inquiète au seuil d’une nouvelle liaison, tourmentée par son désir de bonheur.

Aimez-vous Brahms

" Paule contemplait son visage dans la glace et en détaillait les défaites accumulées en trente-neuf ans, une par une, non point avec l'affolement, l'acrimonie coutumiers en ce cas, mais avec une tranquillité à peine attentive. Comme si la peau tiède, que ses deux doigts tendaient parfois pour souligner une ride, pour faire ressortir une ombre, eût été à quelqu'un d'autre, à une autre Paule passionnément préoccupée de sa beauté et passant difficilement du rang de jeune femme au rang de femme jeune : une femme qu'elle reconnaissait à peine. " En 1954, à la sortie de son premier roman, Bonjour tristesse, on entendait pour la première fois la voix sèche et rapide d'un " charmant petit monstre " de dix-huit ans, qui allait faire scandale et devenir très vite l'un des monstres sacrés de la littérature française. Françoise Sagan a publié de son vivant une quarantaine de textes, romans, pièces de théâtre, nouvelles et scénarios. Elle est morte en 2004, à l'âge de soixante-neuf ans.

Françoise Sagan

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