After marrying a successful Parisian writer known commonly as “Willy” (Dominic West), Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (Keira Knightley) is transplanted from her childhood home in rural France to the intellectual and artistic splendor of Paris. Soon after, Willy convinces Colette to ghostwrite for him. She pens a semi-autobiographical novel about a witty and brazen country girl named Claudine, sparking a bestseller and a cultural sensation. After its...

How does one live? How does one do the good or honorable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Montaigne, perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before. He called them "essays, " meaning "attempts" or "tries." Into them, he put whatever was in his...

"Available in English for the first time, the latest astonishing, bestselling, and award-winning book by Annie Ernaux. The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present -- even projections into the future -- photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect,...

"[Elie Wiesel] taught at Boston University for nearly four decades, and with this book, Ariel Burger-devoted protégé, apprentice, and friend-takes us into the sacred space of Wiesel's classroom. There, Wiesel challenged his students to explore moral complexity and to resist the dangerous lure of absolutes. In bringing together never-before-recounted moments between Wiesel and his students, Witness serves as a moral education in and of itself-a primer...

"Cyrano de Bergerac is a 17th century French soldier-poet and swordsman who loves his cousin Roxane, but believes she will never love him because of his enormous nose. He courts and wins her, not for himself, but for his inexperienced and prosaic friend, Christian, who dies in battle. Years later, as Cyrano himself is dying, he confesses his love to Roxane, who suddenly realizes that it was Cyrano's words she had heard from Christian, and Cyrano that...

A French girl starts out in life with ambitions to have a career, but she also wants love. Love leads to marriage, children, and in no time she is a harried housewife. A study in the conflict between a woman's need to be desired and her need to fulfill herself in a profession. A novel written in defense of all who are expected to put others ahead of themselves. By the author of Simple Passion.

From the author of the beloved classic The Little Prince and a winner of the Grand Prix of the Académie Française, Wind, Sand and Stars captures the grandeur, danger, and isolation of flight. Its exciting account of air adventure, combined with lyrical prose and the spirit of a philosopher, makes it one of the most popular works ever written about flying. Translated by Lewis Galantière.

"In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman, Annie Ernaux revisits the night 50 years earlier when she found herself submerged and controlled by another person's desire and willpower. It is the summer of 1958, the year she turned 18. And then the man she gave herself to moves on. She has submitted her will to his, and now she finds that she is a slave without a master. Now, fifty years later, she realizes she can obliterate the intervening years and...

When Albert Camus died in a car crash in January 1960 he was only 46 years old already a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and a world figure author of the enigmatic The Stranger, the fable called The Plague, but also of the combative The Rebel which attacked the 'politically correct' among his con-temporaries. Thanks to his early literary achievement, his work for the under-ground newspaper Combat and his editorship of that daily in its Post-Liberation...

A tribute to the life of the creator of "The Little Prince" traces his early achievements as a pilot, his efforts to break aviation records, and the experiences that inspired his writing life.