Charlotte - Prix Renaudot 2014 (French Edition) - Softcover

David Foenkinos

Softcover

ISBN 10: 2070145689 ISBN 13: 9782070145683

Publisher: French and European Publications Inc, 2014

Synopsis

Ce roman retrace la vie de Charlotte Salomon, artiste peintre morte à vingt-six ans alors qu'elle était enceinte. Après une enfance à Berlin marquée par une tragédie familiale, Charlotte est exclue progressivement par les nazis de toutes les sphères de la société allemande. Elle vit une passion amoureuse fondatrice, avant de devoir tout quitter pour se réfugier en France. Exilée, elle entreprend la composition d'une oeuvre picturale autobiographique d'une modernité fascinante. Se sachant en danger, elle confie ses dessins à son médecin en lui disant : C'est toute ma vie. Portrait saisissant d'une femme exceptionnelle, évocation d'un destin tragique, Charlotte est aussi le récit d'une quête. Celle d'un écrivain hanté par une artiste, et qui part à sa recherche.

About this title

About the Author

David Foenkinos is a screenwriter and the author of fourteen novels translated into forty languages, including La Délicatesse, Les Souvenirs, and Je Vais Mieux. In 2011, with his brother, he adapted his book La Délicatesse for the film Delicacy, starring Audrey Tautou and François Damiens.

Review

“A huge best seller in France and now translated into 20 languages, Charlotte breaks the mold of traditional biography by presenting a tragic but moving story in a fictional free verse, each sentence embodying a paragraph in an astute, sometimes humorous and often startling mixture of fact and passion. Charlotte is as much a tribute to genius unfulfilled as the author’s mesmerizing search to connect with the subject’s artistic soul. . . . Although Charlotte is a haunting work, fraught with beautiful and sensitive imagery, it issomething more: a testament to creative artistic expression and, in telling the life of the artist, a tribute to the will to survive.”
- Hadassah Magazine

“Foenkinos's paean of Charlotte Salomon's life . . . is a tour de force. Every important detail and much more of this supreme artist's life―'a hierarchy of horror'―is recorded lovingly, passionately, obsessively, and lyrically.”
- The Jewish Chronicle

“I am deeply, deeply affected by this sad, beautiful, indignant, wrenching, important book . . . Stunning.”
- Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent

“Within this crystalline form pulses every shade of emotion, from elation and amusement to longing and sorrow . . . exquisitely empathetic and stunningly tragic.”
- Booklist, starred review

“For fans of Anne Frank, this is indeed a must-read novel . . . Beautifully told.”
- San Francisco Book Review

“A searing portrait of a brilliant artist.”
- Kirkus

“A sensitive and deeply moving novel.”
- Paris Match

About this edition

• Publisher: French and European Publications Inc
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 2070145689
• ISBN 13: 9782070145683
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224
• Editor: Galliamrd