Synopsis
A magical first novel by a talented young French author recreates Proust’s upper-middle-class Paris during WWI.
Few established novelists would dare to write a novel in which Proust appears as a character. Fewer still would have the nerve to invent love letters written by Proust to a 16-year-old boy. For a first novelist to set himself this challenge and succeed is remarkable.
Paris 1916. Vincent is 16 and approaching manhood very much “in the absence of men” with every able-bodied young man away at the front. In his relationship with the soldier-son of one of his parent’s servants, he explores his sexuality. His platonic relationship with the middle-aged Jewish writer Marcel Proust stimulates an intelligence and sophistication remarkable in an adolescent. With both he enters a world of love, both erotic and platonic. The book is as remarkable an act of homage to a great writer as Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Seas was to Charlotte Bronte.
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About the Author
Philippe Besson lives in France. This is his first novel.
From the Back Cover
“A superb novel, brilliant, inventive and audacious... exquisite and cruel, deliciously written.” – Le Monde
“From time to time... first novels appear which announce, without hesitation, without dispute, the arrival of a real writer... Such is the experience of reading Philippe Besson’s In the Absence of Men.” – Magazine Litteraire
From the Inside Flap
A magical first novel by a talented young French author recreates Proust?s upper-middle-class Paris during WWI.
Few established novelists would dare to write a novel in which Proust appears as a character. Fewer still would have the nerve to invent love letters written by Proust to a 16-year-old boy. For a first novelist to set himself this challenge and succeed is remarkable.
Paris 1916. Vincent is 16 and approaching manhood very much ?in the absence of men? with every able-bodied young man away at the front. In his relationship with the soldier-son of one of his parent?s servants, he explores his sexuality. His platonic relationship with the middle-aged Jewish writer Marcel Proust stimulates an intelligence and sophistication remarkable in an adolescent. With both he enters a world of love, both erotic and platonic. The book is as remarkable an act of homage to a great writer as Jean Rhys? Wide Sargasso Seas was to Charlotte Bronte.
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IN THE ABSENCE OF MEN. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.
Published by
William Heinemann, 2002., 2002
ISBN 10: 0434009695
ISBN 13: 9780434009695
Used
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First Edition
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1st U.K. edition. Small 8vo. Prelims. + 166pp. Pages browned. Original boards. Pictorial black d/w. lettered in white, slightly rubbed. ISBN 0434009695 US$10. Seller Inventory # 203554
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