Title : The strange and comical journey of my mother into amnesia - Michel Mompontet - book Summary : " My mother (89 years old) is not losing her mind. She just lets it wander further and further away, to strange lands, often disturbing, threatening, but sometimes wonderfully poetic. Precious nuggets in her debacle that amuse and enchant us as much as she does me ." This is how Michel Mompontet began writing "The Journey into Amnesia," for himself alone and so as not to lose anything of Geneviève's final moments. From his notes, he created a rare book that speaks to each of us. Can we retain time and memories that evaporate? Is love an antidote to memory pathologies? What remains when our brain "flees like a balloon in the azure," when "our mind is crossed by drafts"? Michel Mompontet's story is charged with emotion but it is not sad. He delivers a magnificent filial story and an unforgettable portrait of a woman. Geneviève, a solid Gascon who has lost none of her sense of humor, fights against the evil that is eating away at her with astonishing resources, and often hilarious energy. Her son, Michel, and his allies (devoted nurses, humane doctors, compassionate neighbors but also garden trees, butterflies, stars) strive to find solutions, invent incredible stratagems to counter his main enemy (the formidable Alzheimer's) as well as a cohort of other adversaries (greedy insurers, vindictive aunt, ghosts and unspoken family secrets). So while he believes he has only returned to the Landes village of his childhood to save his mother, it is also with his own past and its shadowy areas that he will reconnect. EAN : 9782709660563 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : Dixie - Julien Green - book Summary : The South... In Savannah as in Charleston, it's roses at Christmas, houses with white columns, elegant women strolling under the foliage of giant oaks or avenues of magnolias bursting with pale flowers, but it's also, this time, red suns on the battlefields and thunderstorms in the night. Despite the time, 1862, and the war, the Civil War, Elizabeth is a young woman for all times, independent and in love. Twice widowed, one could even say three, she dreams of happiness, both physical and emotional. For young people, she represents the eternal feminine. Around her, the war becomes bloodier. At twenty-eight, ignoring conventions and prejudices, she will rediscover love in a simple soldier. Many other characters enliven this fresco where the laughter of life mixes with the tears of History, but it is the children who finally emerge in the foreground with Miss Llewelyn, the Welsh quartermaster, the only one who understands them and knows how to explain to them what they sense: victory must not hide the future. And Dixie , the song of the South, floats over this world like a cry of love. "It was to rediscover what my father and mother told me that I wrote my novels about the South. Mother especially. I was twelve years old when she confessed to me that, despite all our victories, we had been beaten. The South had lost. This marked my entire youth, and I can still see Mother hiding her face. Curiously, in my book, the children are nine, ten, eleven years old, the age when I still believed in my country as victorious..." JG Distant Countries and Southern Stars, the two previous novels that Julien Green devoted to the South, have just been reissued in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (volume VII of the author's Complete Works). EAN : 9782213593784 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : The Doves of the Sun King - Volume 3 - Charlotte, The Rebel - Anne-Marie Desplat-Duc - book Summary : Four young girls dream of adventure and success. Raised at the gates of Versailles, these Doves of the Sun King fly toward their destiny. Charlotte decides to run away from Saint-Cyr and leave behind the orderly existence that doesn't suit her. A new life awaits her at the court of Versailles, a life of celebration, freedom, and joy. However, a discovery disrupts her happiness: her fiancé, François, has disappeared. Charlotte won't admit defeat. She's ready to do anything to find him! EAN : 9782081631793 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : Perpetual Euphoria - Essay on the Duty of Happiness - Pascal Bruckner - book Summary : "A new collective narcotic is invading Western societies: the cult of happiness. Be happy! A terrible commandment that is all the more difficult to escape because it claims to be good for us. How do we know if we are happy? And what do we say to those who pitifully admit: I can't do it? Should we refer them to these well-being therapies, such as Buddhism, consumerism, and other techniques of bliss? What about our relationship with pain in a world where sex and health have become our despots? I call the duty of happiness this ideology that pushes us to evaluate everything from the angle of pleasure and unpleasantness, this assignment to euphoria that rejects into opprobrium or discomfort those who do not subscribe to it. Perversion of the most beautiful idea there is: the possibility granted to each person to control their destiny and improve their existence. It is then misfortune and suffering that are outlawed, at the risk, by being passed over in silence, of resurfacing where they were not expected. Our era tells a strange fable: that of a society devoted to hedonism, in which everything becomes irritation and torture. How could the subversive belief of the Enlightenment, which offered men this right to happiness, previously reserved for the Christian paradise, have been transformed into dogma? Such is the adventure that we retrace here." EAN : 9782246582212 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : First assessment after the apocalypse - Frédéric Beigbeder - book Summary : The apocalypse, would it be digital publishing, or as in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, the temperature at which paper ignites and burns? Frédéric Beigbeder saves here from the fire all the books, to be precise the 100 works, that he wishes to preserve in the twenty-first century, in the form of an intimate hit parade of 100 to 1. It is therefore a totally personal ranking, egotistic, joyful, unexpected, sometimes classic (André Gide, Fitzgerald, Paul-Jean Toulet, Salinger and other greats), often surprising (Patrick Besson, Bret Easton Ellis, Régis Jauffret, Simon Liberati, Gabriel Matzneff, other night owls, other troublemakers). It is rare to establish the panorama of a literature in the process of being made, of improving itself, of inventing itself. With this manifesto, it is the bookish Beigbeder that we discover, at the same time as an autobiography in fragments, a self-portrait as a reader. "If I write, it is thanks to these pieces of papyrus where a soul mate was always hidden. In any case, it is towards these hundred precious objects that one must feel gratitude or resentment." EAN : 9782246777113 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : The Art of Happiness - Howard CUTLER, Dalai Lama - book Summary : Couples, health, relationships between friends: for the first time, the Dalai Lama talks to us about what makes us happy in our daily lives. Ask the Dalai Lama if he is happy, and he will answer "yes" without hesitation, because according to him, happiness is the goal of our entire existence. This is what he explains in this The art of happiness, a surprising blend of wisdom dating back thousands of years, common sense, reflections and concrete advice that we can all apply. Throughout these conversations, the Dalai Lama shows us how to overcome anxiety, insecurity, anger, and discouragement, and he explores our daily lives to teach us how to overcome life's obstacles by tapping into our inner source of peace. EAN : 9782221089378 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : Journal of a Body - Daniel Pennac - book Summary : Wednesday, November 18, 1936 I want to write my body's diary because everyone is talking about something else. (13 years, 1 month, 8 days) Thursday, January 10, 1974 If I were to make this diary public, I would dedicate it first to women. In return, I would like to read the diary that a woman would have kept of her body. Just to lift a corner of the mystery. What does the mystery consist of? For example, in the fact that a man knows nothing about what a woman feels about the size and weight of her breasts, and that women know nothing about what men feel about the size of their genitals. (50 years and 3 months) Monday, July 26, 2010 We are, to the end, the child of our body. A disconcerted child. (86 years, 9 months, 16 days) From the age of 13 to 87, the age of his death, the narrator kept a diary of his body. We, who sometimes feel so alone in our own, are gradually discovering that this secret garden is a shared territory. Everything we kept quiet about is there, in black and white, and what used to scare us so much often becomes a source of laughter. EAN : 9782070124855 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : Anna and Mister God - Fynn - book Summary : The story Fynn tells today happened about thirty years ago. Fynn was nineteen, prowling the docklands of London's East End one foggy November evening, and he discovered, sitting on a step, a filthy, bruised, and terrified little girl. He took her home and entrusted her to her mother, a vigorous Irish woman who welcomed anyone her children brought her. Anna's chief interest in life was her familiarity with God. "Mister God." She understood the meaning of life and the significance of love. By six, she was a theologian, mathematician, philosopher, poet, and gardener. At seven, she died in an accident, her beautiful face crossed by a small grimace, and she said, "Fynn, I bet Mister God will let me into heaven because of this." Fynn evokes this whole story by saying of himself: "My name is Fynn. Well, it's not my real name, but what does it matter? All my friends call me Fynn, it's stuck with me... I'm six foot two, I weigh 200 pounds, I love gymnastics, my mother is Irish and my father is Welsh... My favorite pastime? Walking around the docks at night in the fog." This strange story, told by a strange witness, whose existence the preface writer assures us, resembles a fairy tale: Alice in Dockland or Anna Crusoe in the Island of the Absolute. But no, it's a true story, and that's why it seems incredible. EAN : 9782020043700 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : Julia - Jean-Marc Soyez - book Summary : On the estate, Julia decides, and her son-in-law, Jean-Jean, executes. Ill, Julia does everything she can to facilitate her succession and encourages Jean-Jean to remarry. He does so with Annie, a pretty brunette with a strong character. Despite the war, this family does not suffer too much from the German occupation, until the day Jean-Jean finds himself in the Resistance. The author: Journalist and author of around fifty books, some of which were bestsellers, Jean-Marc Soyez has always invented stories and tales. Several of his stories, notably The Wolf Tile, have been successfully adapted for the screen. EAN : 9782844946195 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : Secret Thoughts - David Lodge - book Summary : Set within the legendary University of Gloucester, two characters engage in the complex game of seduction: Ralph Messenger, a cognitive scientist, and Helen Reed, a novelist weakened by her recent widowhood. Through a series of events and twists and turns, the characters brilliantly discover that we are often wrong about ourselves and almost always wrong about others. EAN : 9782743608767 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : The First Summer - Anne Percin - book Summary : Two sisters meet one late summer in Haute-Saône to empty their deceased grandparents' house. For a long time, Catherine, the youngest, has kept her distance from this village... Yet, every street corner or face she encounters brings back specific and painful memories. Her older sister has started a family, she hasn't. Having become a bookseller, she is a solitary woman. Even as a teenager, she spent her hours in books. But for what she experienced here, the summer she was sixteen, the summer she read "Le Grand Meaulnes," "there were no words. There never were, neither before nor after. It's something that doesn't resemble anything written." Fifteen years have passed since then, and no one has ever known what secret has been tormenting her all this time, the tragedy she was perhaps EAN : 9782812602498 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : The Girl with Vodka - Delphine de Malherbe - book Summary : Alcohol addiction, passion... Alice Duval advances step by step, like a tightrope walker. Alice is beautiful. In Paris, the world smiles at her. But suddenly, for some mysterious reason, she abandons her life and moves to Avignon. In the capital of theater, she drops the mask before a strange man who attracts her. Faced with him, she falters and reveals herself to be the victim of a taboo disease among a growing number of young women: alcohol. Will passionate love cure her of her vodka addiction? Step by step, like a fragile tightrope walker, she advances hesitantly between wisdom and the abyss, between the intoxication of life and the vertigo of love. Delphine de Malherbe's strength lies in transforming the taboo of female alcoholism into a powerful and beautiful novel, dedicated to Romy Schneider and Amy Winehouse in particular... and to women in general. EAN : 9782259218696 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : The Passengers of the King of Rome - Jeanne Faivre d'Arcier - book Summary : "Here I am, more than thirty years that I have been vegetating, my ass in the mud and my nose pressed against the disjointed planks of a Maritime Affairs hangar that blocks my horizon: the small port of Four on the Arcachon basin, on the Cap Ferret peninsula side. They call me The King of Rome and yet my kingdom is only an illusion. It is limited to a piece of quay greened by algae, a dead end used by stray dogs and kids who have escaped from the neighboring campsite who come to gorge themselves on blackberries or play in the salt meadows..." Sailors say that a tub never dies! The King of Rome, on the other hand, had passed from hand to hand, from captain to captain. He had sailed the Caribbean seas transporting dubious goods, before running aground in the squalid seas of the peninsula... Unscrupulous people would like to buy him to turn him into a sort of floating casino; others, a clandestine gambling room, an opium den... Thugs dream, sometimes. And blackmailers lie in wait, ready for anything, including murder. But first, they will have to solve the enigma of the passengers of the Roi de Rome, these strangers locked away in the hold for months, even years... The Roi de Rome knows their story... But on this point, he, so eloquent, remains silent. Until when? A captivating dark and adventure novel, where we meet colorful characters, including Matthieu, the hero of Les Yeux de Cendre (Le Cherche Midi, 2006). Winner of the 2001 Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire, Jeanne Faivre d'Arcier has written fantasy novels, including two books on vampires, Rouge flamenco and La Déesse écarlate, considered essential by fans of the genre. Les Passagers du Roi de Rome is her third crime novel. EAN : 9782268067681 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : Three Days at My Mother's - François Weyergans - book Summary : "On the train, he pressed his head against the window and saw, superimposed on it, floating amidst a backdrop of scrub, a pale, tense face, his own, with its unmistakable forehead, high and receding hairline, swollen eyelids, and thin-lipped mouth. He felt like saying to himself: "What can I do for you?" This face so close to his inspired a deep sympathy in him." Night after night, a deeply disturbed man protects himself by recalling his past—so many travels, so many haunting romantic encounters. His memory makes him dizzy. Will his memories help him get better? He invents a series of doubles who lead romantic lives just as turbulent as his own. He wants to visit his mother. She lives alone in Provence and will soon be ninety. He has a job to finish first. His mother tells him, "Instead of sending faxes to your dozen or so lovers, you should publish a book, otherwise people will think you're dead." Better than anyone, François Weyergans combines depth and humor, emotion and laughter, in this novel which powerfully affirms the powers of literature. EAN : 9782246545910 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : The Arenberg Trench and Other Sporting Delights - Philippe Delerm - book Summary : There are these little bits of memories that suddenly resurface... these fleeting pleasures that we thought had vanished... Nostalgia at the end of the line, but also the present of movements, the arabesque of dribbling, the grace of the skater, the elegance of the sentence... There's Colette Besson's radiant smile, Platini's hand in Battiston's, Jean-Pierre Rives's golden helmet, Zidane's thrusts... Philippe Delerm captures all these gestures that are sport, like evidence of joy and suffering intertwined. These sporting pleasures, madeleines scattered throughout the stadiums that make us live, relive these moments of emotion. EAN : 9782755702156 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : Imperial Suite(s) - Bret Easton Ellis - book Summary : Twenty-five years after the publication of Less than zero, the story continues... A dive into the decadence, violence and existential emptiness of LA's gilded class Clay, the anti-hero of Ellis's first bestseller, Less than Zero returns to Los Angeles. He's twenty years older, a little older, a little more alone and idle. He meets up with those he knew in his youth: Blair, Trent, Julian, Rip... the representatives of a golden and lost generation, abandoned to the emptiness, solitude, and vanity that destroy them. As an associate producer on the film adaptation of his latest screenplay, Clay participates in the casting of the film, uses his power to seduce Rain, a sublime but untalented young actress, and makes her false promises. He'll do anything to possess her. But who's manipulating whom? Clay soon discovers that he's constantly being watched and followed... Jealousy, betrayal, murder, manipulation... here, in the City of Angels, everyone encounters the same power games and the same demons, gets drunk on sex, images, drugs, unreal parties... and reveals themselves to be ever more bitter and desperate. Emptiness and fury suck the characters in, and make them lose all sense of boundaries. EAN : 9782221108697 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : The Princess Exchange - Chantal Thomas - book Summary : In 1721, Philippe d'Orléans was Regent of France. The exercise of power was enjoyable, and he took a liking to it. Then a brilliant idea arose in his head: to propose to Philippe V of Spain a marriage between Louis XV, aged eleven, and the very young Infanta, Anna Maria Victoria, aged four – who would therefore not be able to give birth for a decade… And he didn't stop there: he also proposed to give his daughter, Mlle de Montpensier, as a wife to the young Prince of Asturias, future heir to the throne of Spain, to strengthen his position and consolidate the end of the conflict with the large neighbor. The reaction in Madrid was enthusiastic, and things quickly fell into place. The exchange of princesses took place in early 1722, with great pomp and ceremony, on a small island in the middle of the Bidasoa River, the river that served as the border between the two kingdoms. Everything could be going well. But nothing would go as planned... EAN : 9782021119138 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : Adèle D'aiguebrune Volume 2 - The Hour of Elise - Pascale Rey - book Summary : A great female character, noble and serious, in an eminently romantic era. The storm of Terror has receded, Adèle has returned to her poor castle of Aiguebrune. And her life is empty: gone is the Count of Méricourt, her lover in the happy days of Champlaurier; gone is the handsome Michel Marsaud, the revolutionary who, for a moment, made her heart beat in the turmoil. After four years of absence, Denis, her half-brother, reappears. He is certainly a colonel of the Republic, but he is bitter: lacking political support, he is kept at a distance, while his brothers-in-arms, all generals, soar from victory to victory with Bonaparte. Meeting Michel Marsaud, who has become Commissioner General to the Directory, allows her to achieve the dream rank; a situation reinforced by his marriage to the insignificant daughter of the very powerful and very rich Commissioner General of the Armies, a friend of Fouché. This marriage brings Adèle to Paris, which she discovers with joy. For her, life in Paris is a celebration. Painful at times, when she finds herself rejected by the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where she is criticized for not having emigrated, for having survived and for being, it is said, the mistress of the deputy Marsaud. General Denis Barrère is in Italy where he is champing at the bit (at that time, Bonaparte is in Egypt). But, because there is no question of endangering the son-in-law of a general commissioner, he is recalled to Paris. Then the proud Denis collapses: he frequents gambling houses, ruins himself. He could not pay his debt without selling Aiguebrune. He commits suicide. Adèle takes care of the little girl born from Denis's marriage, as she once did with Élise. But she is tired. Méricourt has turned his back on her, Marsaud, after Brumaire, has retired to Charente. She is barely forty years old, but she has lived too much: History has crushed her, she has loved without being loved. Back in her old empty manor, she learns that Aiguebrune has not been sold: Marsaud has paid Denis's debt; and she finally understands that if Marsaud, before the revolutionary tribunal, could not save Élise, it is because the young girl was condemned by the wealth and splendor of her family, and that he chose to save her, Adèle d'Aiguebrune, who was poor and loved by her people. And so, deep in their province, far from the din of the big city, Adèle the noblewoman and Marsaud the revolutionary will end up confessing their hidden love. EAN : 9782221091777 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : The Annual Banquet of the Brotherhood of Gravediggers - Mathias Enard - book Summary : For the purposes of a thesis devoted to "country life in the 21st century," apprentice ethnologist David Mazon left Paris and took up residence in a modest village in Deux-Sèvres. Living on a farm, soon equipped with a moped suitable for his investigations, eating at the Café-Épicerie-Pêche and drawing on local knowledge from the friendly mayor - also a gravedigger - the newcomer began a field journal, recording small true facts and local customs, determined to circumscribe and epitomize rurality. But he ignores some of the whims of this place where Death rules the roost. When it seizes someone, it is to immediately throw them into the Wheel of Time, recycle them into an animal as well as a human, grant them an immediate destiny or one in a previous era - as if to better resuscitate this deep France whose local and regional soil Mathias Enard excels at plowing, at excavating its historical strata, without ever losing sight of the small circle of villagers who surround the ethnologist and outline (perhaps) the happy neorurality of our tomorrows. But the Mayor is already busy preparing his brotherhood's annual Banquet - a gargantuan three-day feast during which Death calls a truce so that the gravediggers - and the readers - can feast without qualms in a fabulous opulence of food, libations and language. For the flavors of language, its persistence and its metamorphosis, are the epicenter of this stirring of the centuries and of this extraordinary novel, as full of truculence as it is enamored of popular culture, rich in memory, fertile in fraternity. EAN : 9782330135508 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : Proud Eleanor - Children of the Revolution Volume 1 - François Ceresa - book Summary : They are passionately in love. Alas! Éléonore de Moussey is a young aristocrat and Charles Rivolier is a teenager from modest backgrounds… When the Revolution breaks out, each is forced to choose sides. The two lovers are now sworn enemies. As the Italian campaign begins, the destinies of Charles and Éléonore will cross once again. The meeting will be explosive. EAN : 9782259196994 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : The Glory of the Damned - Nicolas d'Estienne d'Orves - book Summary : The daughter of a collaborator executed before her eyes at the Liberation, Gabrielle Valoria is to write the first biography of Sidonie Porel. But who is Sidonie Porel really? The most famous novelist of her time, or a literary fraud? A great lover or a manipulator? Delving into the past of this woman she both fears and admires, Gabrielle discovers a world teeming with liars and traitors. Writers, politicians, journalists, prostitutes, big bosses: all hiding a secret that kills... In Successive Loyalties ( Cazes-Lipp Prize ), Nicolas d'Estienne d'Orves explored the ambiguities of the Occupation, with La Gloire des cursed, he attacks the lies of the post-war period. This romantic portrait of a France in the aftermath of chaos, where we meet the great figures of intellectual and artistic Paris in the 1950s, shows that the past always catches up with us and that wars never end. EAN : 9782226317308 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : The Berber Dreamlighter - Fellag - book Summary : In an Algiers housing project in the early 1990s, water is distributed twice a week, from 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. During this time, while the water flows and life resumes, Zakaria, a famous journalist, observes the actions of his fellow citizens from his balcony and records them on index cards. He would like to use them to compose the great novel of his life and reconnect with his youthful dreams, from the time when he was not shackled by the system. For Zakaria is going through a crisis of conscience. Since the events of October 1988, he joined the protest movement but finds himself caught in a vice: on one side, an old regime that must be dynamited; on the other, Islamist extremists who hunt down women, intellectuals, and all those who refuse to conform to their vision of the world. To escape death, he hides at home during the day and only leaves his observation post at nightfall to tell us the most incredible stories that abound in a country gripped by fear. With The Berber Dream Igniter , Fellag sets fire to the imagination of a people who cultivate supreme elegance: that of laughing at their misfortunes. EAN : 9782709626705 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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Title : The Words in My Hands - Guinevere Glasfurd - book Summary : Helena Jans van der Strom is not your average maid. When she arrives in Amsterdam to work for an English bookseller, the young woman, fascinated by words, has taught herself to read and write. Her independence and thirst for knowledge will find echoes in the heart and mind of the philosopher René Descartes. But in this 17th century of light and shadow, their affair could be their undoing. Descartes is Catholic, Helena is Protestant. He is a philosopher, she is a maid. What could their future hold? By revealing this proven and little-known romantic relationship, Guinevere Glasfurd paints a fascinating portrait of a luminous woman, ahead of her time, and reveals another side of the famous French philosopher. A novel of passion and freedom that immerses us in a captivating fresco of the Netherlands in the "golden age", in the style of The Girl with a Pearl Earring. EAN : 9782253107804 Used book Book in good condition The book matches the photo

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