Jules et Jim (Penguin Modern Classics)

In free-spirited Paris, Jules and Jim live a carefree, bohemian existence. They write in cafes, travel when the mood takes them, and share the women they love without jealousy. Women like Lucie, flawless, an abbess, and Odile, impulsive, mischievous, almost feral. But it is Kate - with a smile the two friends had determined to always follow before they even met her, but capricious enough to jump in the Seine from spite - who steals their hearts most thoroughly. Henri-Pierre Roche was in his mid-seventies when he wrote this, his autobiographical debut novel. The inspiration for the legendary film, it captures perfectly with excitement and great humour the tenderness of three people in love with each other and with life.

Henri-Pierre Roche was born in Paris on 28 May 1879. Part of the avant-garde scene in Paris at the turn of the twentieth century, he was friends with artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, and introduced Leo and Gertrude Stein to Picasso. Having been a journalist, art collector and dealer for most of his life, Roche only wrote his first novel, Jules et Jim, when he was in his seventies. Truffaut was so impressed by the book he made both it and Roche's second novel, Les deux anglaises et le continent (1956), into films. Roche died on 9 April 1959. Agnes Poirier is a political commentator and film critic for the British, French, Italian and Polish press, and a regular contributor to the BBC on politics and films. She is the author of Les Nouveaux Anglais (2005) and Touche: A French woman's take on the English (2006).