Discover the Penguin books that shaped us

Liberty Bar

byGeorges Simenon, David Watson (Translator)

Inspector Maigret #17

Half an hour later, he was in Cannes ... White everywhere! Huge white hotels, white shops, white trousers and dresses, white sails out at sea.
It was as if life were no more than a pantomime fairy-tale, a white and blue fairy-tale.

Dazzled at first by the glamour of sunny Antibes, Maigret soon finds himself immersed in the less salubrious side of the Riviera when he traces the steps of a shabby former spy who is fond of pretty women and dive bars.

One of the greatest writers of the 20th century . . . no other writer can set up a scene as sharply and with such economy as Simenon does . . . the conjuring of a world, a place, a time, a set of characters - above all, an atmosphere

John Banville, Financial Times

About Georges Simenon

Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium in 1903. An intrepid traveller with a profound interest in people, Simenon strove on and off the page to understand, rather than to judge, the human condition in all its shades. His novels include the Inspector Maigret series and a richly varied body of wider work united by its evocative power, its economy of means, and its penetrating psychological insight. He is among the most widely read writers in the global canon. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.
Details
All editions