Violette Leduc

Deborah Levy

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The Lady and the Little Fox Fur

Penguin Shop: 3 Clothbound Classics for £33

A forceful affirmation of the human spirit

Violette Leduc's novels are works of genius and also a bit peculiar

She can capture the smells of a country childhood, dazzle with the lights of the Place de la Concorde or make you feel the silky slither of her eel-grey suit

This book is as richly humane as anything else you're likely to read

What is important about Violette Leduc is the extraordinary perfection she brings to experience and the exquisite skill she uses to describe it

The great French feminist writer we need to remember

Leduc's short book is magnificently disproportionate to its length. A moving, beautiful and authentic classic. We must be grateful to the Penguin European Writers series, a precious venture in these dark times, for bringing it back to us.

The Lady and the Little Fox Fur is an existential feminist classic about an old woman who lives alone in a tiny attic flat in Paris, where she counts out coffee beans every morning beneath the roar of the overhead metro. Starving, she spends her days walking around the city, each step a bid for recognition of her own existence. She rides crowded metro carriages to feel the warmth of other bodies, and watches the hot batter of pancakes drip from the hands of street-sellers. 
 
One morning she awakes with an urgent need to taste an orange; but when she rummages in the bins she finds instead a discarded fox fur scarf. The little fox fur becomes the key to her salvation, the friend who changes her lonely existence into a playful world of her own invention. The Lady and the Little Fox Fur is a stunning portrait of Paris, of the invisibility we all feel in a big city, and ultimately of the hope and triumph of a woman who reclaims her place in the world.

'Violette Leduc's novels are works of genius and also a bit peculiar' Deborah Levy, from the introduction 
 
An old woman lives alone in a tiny attic flat in Paris, counting out coffee beans every morning beneath the roar of the overhead metro. Starving, she spends her days walking around the city, each step a bid for recognition of her own existence. She rides crowded metro carriages to feel the warmth of other bodies, and watches the hot batter of pancakes drip from the hands of street-sellers. 
 
One morning she awakes with an urgent need to taste an orange; but when she rummages in the bins she finds instead a discarded fox fur scarf. The little fox fur becomes the key to her salvation, the friend who changes her lonely existence into a playful world of her own invention. 
 
The Lady and the Little Fox Fur is a stunning portrait of Paris, of the invisibility we all feel in a big city, and ultimately of the hope and triumph of a woman who reclaims her place in the world. 
 
'A moving, beautiful and authentic classic. We must be grateful to the Penguin European Writers series, a precious venture in these dark times, for bringing it back to us.' John Banville, Booker prize-winning author of The Sea 
 
'The great French feminist writer we need to remember' Guardian

'Violette Leduc's novels are works of genius and also a bit peculiar' Deborah Levy, from the introduction 
 
An old woman lives alone in a tiny attic flat in Paris, counting out coffee beans every morning beneath the roar of the overhead metro. Starving, she spends her days walking around the city, each step a bid for recognition of her own existence. She rides crowded metro carriages to feel the warmth of other bodies, and watches the hot batter of pancakes drip from the hands of street-sellers. 
 
 One morning she awakes with an urgent need to taste an orange; but when she rummages in the bins she finds instead a discarded fox fur scarf. The little fox fur becomes the key to her salvation, the friend who changes her lonely existence into a playful world of her own invention. 
 
The Lady and the Little Fox Fur is a stunning portrait of Paris, of the invisibility we all feel in a big city, and ultimately of the hope and triumph of a woman who reclaims her place in the world.

Violette Leduc (Author) VIOLETTE LEDUC was born in Arras in 1907, the illegitimate child of a servant girl. Sent to boarding school before the First World War, Violette was later expelled upon the discovery of her love affair with both another female pupil and her music teacher. During the Second World War she published her memoir, The Bastard, which scandalized the literary world with its explicit account of lesbian love, sold 150,000 copies in its first year, and earned her the acclaim of Simone de Beauvoir, Sartre and Camus. In 2013 a film was made of her life, Violette. She died in 1972. Deborah Levy (Introducer) Deborah Levy is the author of several novels including August Blue, Hot Milk and Swimming Home, alongside a formally innovative, critically acclaimed 'living autobiography' trilogy: Things I Don't Want to Know, The Cost of Living and Real Estate. She has been shortlisted twice each for the Goldsmiths Prize and Booker Prize and won the Prix Femina Etranger. She has also written for The Royal Shakespeare Company and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

The Lady and the Little Fox Fur

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A forceful affirmation of the human spirit

Violette Leduc's novels are works of genius and also a bit peculiar

She can capture the smells of a country childhood, dazzle with the lights of the Place de la Concorde or make you feel the silky slither of her eel-grey suit

This book is as richly humane as anything else you're likely to read

What is important about Violette Leduc is the extraordinary perfection she brings to experience and the exquisite skill she uses to describe it

The great French feminist writer we need to remember

A vastly under-read author

Leduc's short book is magnificently disproportionate to its length. A moving, beautiful and authentic classic. We must be grateful to the Penguin European Writers series, a precious venture in these dark times, for bringing it back to us.

About Violette Leduc

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