Farewell My Queen by Chantal Thomas

Farewell My Queen by Chantal Thomas

It was once the job of Madame Agathe-Sidonie Laborde to read books aloud to Marie-Antoinette. Now exiled in Vienna, she looks back twenty-one years to the legendary opulence of Versailles and meticulously reconstructs July 14, 15, and 16 of 1789.
When Agathe-Sidonie is summoned to the Queen's side on the morning of the 14th, Versailles is a miniature universe, sparkling with every outward appearance of happiness and power, peopled with nobles of minutely calibrated rank, and run according to a hundred-year-old ritual called the Perfect Day. But with the shocking news that someone has woken the King in the night, order begins to disintegrate and word of the fall of the Bastille seeps into court. Soon Versailles's beauty is nothing more than a shell encasing rising panic and chaos. Agathe-Sidonie watches as the Queen's attempts to flee are aborted; her most intimate friend betrays her; and the King, appearing to sleepwalk through this crisis, never alters his routine of visiting the Apollo Salon several times a day to consult a giant crystal thermometer.
From the tiniest garret to the Hall of Mirrors, where Marie-Antoinette stands alone and terrified in the dark, Chantal Thomas shows us a world on the edge of oblivion and an intimate portrait of the woman who, like fire in motion, was its center.

Chantal Thomas was raised at the seaside in Arcachon, near Bordeaux. She has taught literature in a number of American universities and is the author of over 20 books. She also works as a screenwriter. She won the Prix Femina for her novel Farewell, My Queen (2002), also adapted as a film by Benoit Jacquot, and later received the prestigious Roger-Caillois and Prince de Monaco prizes for her entire work.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780743260787
ISBN 10	0743260783
Title	Farewell My Queen
Author	Chantal Thomas
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Simon & Schuster
Year published	2004-07-14
Number of pages	256
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable