Clair de femme
One of the copies stamped as review copies.
Signed presentation inscription: “À Hervé Bazin, Romain Gary.”
Gary’s pen is decidedly addictive: Clair de femme, in its grandiose irony, is a novel that oscillates between a passionate declaration of love and a profound reflection on the couple, “at a time when everyone screams of loneliness, and no one knows they are screaming of love.”
Costa-Gavras made a successful film adaptation, starring Romy Schneider and Yves Montand.
A fine copy with a fine provenance: it is inscribed to the man who, since 1960, had been a member of the Académie Goncourt, elected to the seat of Francis Carco, who had himself voted four years earlier for Romain Gary and Les Racines du ciel: Hervé Bazin. Bazin would become president of the Académie in 1973 and, unknowingly, crown Gary a second time in 1975 with La Vie devant soi. At a time when the Ajar hoax had not yet been revealed, Gary sent Bazin his first book published since the Ajar novel — a most laconic inscription, as though he had nothing more to add.