The Confession of a Child of the Century by Alfred De Musset

The Confession of a Child of the Century by Alfred De Musset

Recently made into a film starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Pete Doherty and Lily Cole, this French novel of love and betrayal is now available in a new English translation for the first time in over a hundred years. Inspired by his scandalous real-life affair with the flamboyant woman who called herself George Sand, Alfred de Musset's Confession is a searingly honest, passionate account of a young man's rite of passage. It tells the story of Octave, desperate to be more than an 'average man', who searches for happiness first as a debauched libertine, until his mistress Elise is unfaithful, and then in an austere life in the countryside, where he falls in love with the selfless Brigitte. But as he becomes consumed by insane jealousy and convinced that Brigitte will betray him, Octave brings about his own destruction. A vivid, opulent portrayal of obsession and despair, this is also a philosophical portrait of a man and his times, expressing the failed idealism of the Romantic generation of the early nineteenth century. David Coward's vibrant translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing de Musset's affair with Sand and his work's place in the confessional genre. This edition contains a chronology, notes and further reading.

Confession of a Child of the Century is not only a searingly honest self-portrait but a portrait of a whole generation..Musset's self-lashing memoir is a defence of human and spiritual values to which he could only aspire. He never reformed and never again wrote anything as good -- David Coward

Alfred de Musset was born in 1810 in Paris. He attempted careers in medicine, law and drawing before publishing his first collection of poems, Contes d'Espagne et d'Italie (1829). He subsequently wrote numerous plays, and the erotic novel Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess (1833) is sometimes attributed to him. From 1833 to 1835, he had an affair with the novelist George Sand, which became the basis for his most famous novel La Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle (1836). Sand herself also fictionalized the affair in her novel Elle et lui. Musset died in 1857 and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

David Coward is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Leeds. He won a Scott-Moncrieff prize for his edition of Albert Cohen's Belle du Seigneur, and has also translated Molière for Penguin Classics.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780141391854
ISBN 10	0141391855
Title	The Confession of a Child of the Century
Author	Alfred De Musset
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Books Ltd
Year published	2013-05-30
Number of pages	320
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.