L'elegance du herisson by Muriel Barbery

L'elegance du herisson by Muriel Barbery

The international bestseller that has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a moving, funny, atmospheric novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

We are in an elegant htel particulier in the center of Paris. Ren'e, the building's concierge, is short, ugly, and plump. She has bunions on her feet. She is cantankerous and addicted to television soaps. Her only genuine attachment is to her cat, Leo. In short, she is everything society expects from a concierge at a bourgeois building in a posh Parisian neighborhood. But Ren'e has a secret: she is a ferocious autodidact who furtively devours art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With biting humor she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants--her inferiors in every way except that of material wealth.

Then there's Paloma, a super-smart twelve-year-old and the youngest daughter of the Josses, who live on the fifth floor. Talented, precocious, and startingly lucid, she has come to terms with life's seeming futility and has decided to end her own on the day of her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue hiding her extraordinary intelligence behind a mask of mediocrity, acting the part of an average pre-teen high on pop subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter.

Paloma and Ren'e hide both their true talents and their finest qualities from a world they suspect cannot or will not appreciate them. They discover their kindred souls when a wealthy Japanese man named Ozu arrives in the building. Only he is able to gain Paloma's trust and to see through Ren'e's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her.

Muriel Barbery was born in 1969 in Casablanca. She studied philosophy at the cole Normale Sup'rieure and worked for many years as a philosophy teacher in France. Her New York Times bestselling novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Europa Editions, 2008) has been published in over thirty countries. Barbery now lives in Japan and is working on a third novel.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9782070780938
ISBN 10	2070780937
Title	L'elegance du herisson
Author	Muriel Barbery
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	European Schoolbooks Limited
Year published	2006-08-31
Number of pages	359
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable