Les Valeureux
One of 55 copies on vélin pur fil (no. 55), the only paper issue.
The essential companion to Belle du Seigneur.
Cohen’s fourth and final novel had a rather unusual genesis. In 1967, Cohen submitted the substantial manuscript of Belle du Seigneur to Gallimard. The reading committee raised some reservations about its length, and Cohen took back the manuscript to make significant cuts.
The novel was published the following year, while Cohen took up the “cuttings” from his manuscript and set to work on them. From these emerged a new narrative, Les Valeureux, published in 1969.
Charles Gombault, to whom the book is dedicated, became a friend of Cohen’s during the war, in London in 1940, where he was editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper France. Cohen’s daughter worked there as a proofreader, and her father would sometimes join her. After the war, Cohen settled in Geneva and Gombault in Paris, where he became director of France-Soir. The two men rarely saw each other, but it seems the journalist played a part in the affair of the Belle du Seigneur cuts.