Chéri and The End of Chéri
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An exquisite new translation of Colette’s tragicomic masterpiece, a pair of novels exploring the relationship between an aging courtesan and a much younger man
Chéri and its sequel, The End of Chéri, mark Colette’s finest achievements in their brilliant, subtle, and frank investigations of love and power.
Set in the Parisian demimonde in the last days of the Belle Époque, Chéri tells the story of Léa, a courtesan at the end of a successful career, and her lover, the beautiful but emotionally opaque Chéri. Chéri will soon enter into an arranged marriage, ending their six-year affair, which—they will each realize too late—has been the one real love of their lives. The End of Chéri picks up their story in the aftermath of the First World War; as a psychically wounded Chéri begins an inexorable descent, he finds he cannot return to the Léa he left.
With a preface by the acclaimed Lydia Davis, Rachel Careau’s lean, attentive translation restores to these classic novels their taut, remarkably modern style—the essence of Colette’s genius.
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Colette (1873–1954) authored numerous works, including Gigi, The Vagabond, and the five Claudine novels. She was the first woman elected president of the Académie Goncourt.
Lydia Davis is the author of one novel and seven story collections. Her collection Varieties of Disturbance: Stories was a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award. She is the recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Award of Merit Medal, and was named a Chevalier of the Order of the Arts and Letters by the French government for her fiction and her translations of modern writers, including Maurice Blanchot, Michel Leiris, and Marcel Proust. Lydia Davis is the winner of the 2013 Man Booker International Prize.
Gabrielle de Cuir, an Audie and Earphones Award–winning narrator, has narrated over three hundred titles and specializes in fantasy, humor, and titles requiring extensive foreign language and accent skills.
Rachel Careau is the recipient of a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship. Her writing and translations have appeared recently in BOMB, Harper’s Magazine, Literary Hub, Plume, and Two Lines. She lives in Hudson, New York.
