Books and Documents

Deluxe-paper copy of this collection of political texts

Deluxe-paper copy

Kundera's postmodern manifesto, to Maurice Nadeau

Signed to Maurice Nadeau

Rare printing, on fine paper, signed by Cocteau

Relations between the two men had soured with the publication of Le Potomak in 1919, when Gide attacked the poems of Le Cap de Bonne-Espérance. Cocteau later recalled: “He summoned me like a schoolboy in trouble before the headmaster and read me an open letter he intended for me. [...] In Gide's letter, I appeared…

It was at Avernes, a small village some fifty kilometers northwest of Paris, in a long building poetically named “le Four à chaux de Marie Godard,” that the traveler-writer often withdrew to compose first Les Cavaliers, then Les Temps sauvages. He began writing it upon returning from a trip to Afghanistan with his wife.For Kessel,…

The clandestine Éditions de Minuit, including Le Silence de la mer

Deluxe issue of the author's thriller

Jean Cocteau had described to his mother the outlines of the character he was contemplating for La Moitié d'ombre, the first title of Le Grand Écart: "it will be a heart rich and pure, mixed with the baseness of a city, walking along the edge, like sleepwalkers along the edge of a roof. A sensibility…

Announcing Le Poète assassiné

Hélion to Tanning and Ernst

This first novel — awarded the Prix Renaudot — tells "the story of a man who could not quite tell whether he had come out of the army or out of a psychiatric asylum," and is, according to its author — then twenty-three years old — the work of an adolescent. Answering journalist Jacques-Pierre Amette…

From one President to another: the François Mitterrand copy

Mitterrand's own copy, inscribed by Kundera

Sagan to President Mitterrand

A family copy

Deluxe-paper copy

Volume II of Dernier Royaume, deluxe copy

This is the second book illustrated by the photographer, following La Mandragore in 1991, on a text by Michel-Ange Serreti.The same title would be used two years later by Edouard Boubat, the photographer and friend of the writer, for one of his last books, a tribute to Lella, his muse. Christian Bobin, a keen admirer…

"In the weeks following the announcement of the prizewinner, a rumor spread through Paris that the Goncourt had been a resounding commercial failure. Now, while the jurors owe their aura to their power to bring happiness to booksellers, a publisher, a distributor, a writer and, sometimes, readers, it is also well known that nothing is…

Marcel Proust's copy, presented by Reynaldo Hahn

An autograph manuscript of a journey to Naples

Le Clézio's second published book, appearing two years after Le Procès-verbal, La Fièvre is a collection of short stories about small, passing moments of madness, drawn from “familiar experience.” Still gripped by the anguish of city life, Le Clézio writes in a register of near-physical rage: pain, toothache, fatigue and sleeplessness run throughout La Fièvre,…

In 1967, two dolphins held a press conference, in English, before a dumbfounded audience of journalists. They spoke — somewhat nasally, since they lack vocal cords and use their blowholes, but clearly. An international event... entirely fictional: many researchers have dreamed of this chapter of Robert Merle's novel. Unfortunately, Dr. Lilly's research, on which the…

Deluxe-paper printing

This short story was written in Echandens in December 1962. It appeared only once, serialized in issues no. 901 and 902 of the magazine Elle, dated 29 March and 5 April 1963. No manuscript exists: like many of Simenon's postwar writings, the story was typed directly. The original typescript has been lost, and no copy…