The Red Lily by Anatole France

Description

Thérèse Martin-Bellème, married and admired, is accustomed to the unequal treaties of Parisian society — love as a polite arrangement, jealousy as an entertainment. Her meeting with Jacques Dechartre, a sculptor of the old school, in the houses and streets of Florence, turns the arrangement into something else entirely. France follows the affair through its passages of light — the Arno, the cloisters, the Renaissance in the air — into the jealousies and accusations that neither partner can stop.

Published in 1894, The Red Lily is France’s mature masterpiece of the passions: cynical about everything except the pain love actually causes. None of his critics doubted that the novel’s Florentine love affair was in part his own.

Why readers still come back to it

• Florence as backdrop and argument, drawn with a connoisseur’s love.
• A love story built from modern irony and ancient feeling at once.
• Anatole France at the height of his reputation as a novelist of society.

About this DodaBooks edition

Set for a sophisticated novel read: crisp type, a working table of contents, and chapter pacing that lets France’s conversations breathe. Florence glows in the file the moment your order is placed and the download begins.