About the Book
An atmospheric, exuberant novel about love and sex, art and revolution, experimentation and creativity from the best-selling author of The Postcard, Anne Berest, and her sister, the acclaimed novelist Claire Berest, based on the life of their great grandmother.
The year is 1908, the height of the Belle Epoque, and a brilliant, young French woman named Gabriële, newly graduated from the most elite music school in Europe, meets a volcanic Spanish artist named Francis. Following a whirlwind romance, they marry and fall headlong into a Paris that is experimenting with new forms of living, thinking, and creating. Soon after marrying Francis, Gabriële meets Marcel, another young artist, five years her junior. Soon, Francis, Marcel, and Gabriële are all three involved in a fervent affair that will change the course of art history and redefine the avant-garde. Surrealism, Dada, and Abstraction are among the new artistic practices and new ideas that emerge from this electric love triangle in the following decade, during which the Belle Epoque sours and the world descends into the devastation of World War I. Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Gabriele Buffet—the protagonists of this brilliantly imagined “true novel”—are vividly reimagined by the Berests. Moving between Paris, New York, Berlin, Zurich, Barcelona, and Saint-Tropez, Gabriële is as audacious, uninhibited, and unforgettable as its central character, the mercurial, pioneering Gabriële Buffet.
About the Author :
Anne Berest’s novel The Postcard (Europa, 2023), was a national bestseller in the US, a Library Journal, NPR, Vogue and TIME Best Book of the Year, and a finalist for the Prix Goncourt. It was described as “stunning” in The New Yorker, as a “powerful literary work” in The New York Times Book Review, and as “intimate, profound, essential” in ELLE magazine.
Claire Berest is the author of five novels, including Rien n’est noir, winner of the ELLE Readers Grand Prize, her most recent, Artifice (Hachette, 2024), and two works of nonfiction.
Tina Kover’s translations for Europa Editions include Anne Berest’s The Postcard and Négar Djavadi’s Disoriental, winner of the Albertine Prize and the Lambda Literary Award, and a finalist for both the 2020 National Book Award for Translated Literature and the PEN Translation Prize.
Review :
"The Berest sisters have summoned up, with exceptional liveliness and intensity, a vanished world of art, love and experiments."
"Gabriële is a pleasure to read, the Belle Époque brought back to life in all its splendour."
“Love and art collide to change the course of history in this passionate, daring and utterly enthralling novel.”
"STOP PRESS: INTELLECTUAL AND CREATIVE GIANT OF THE PARIS BOHEMIAN SET TURNS OUT TO BE A WOMAN!
This is a wonderful story, long overdue in the telling."
“Gabriële is an extraordinary character—and her tumultuous life seems stranger than fiction. A talented composer, a reluctant mother, a passionate lover and a paradoxical heroine, she inspired painters and poets. This book is a delight to read.”
"Like Gabriële herself, this book takes on big ideas about modern art and modern life — without losing sight of the people caught and crushed in those turning gears."
"Gabriële was not beautiful, but she was brilliant, even visionary. In the Berest sisters’ telling, her self-confidence stuns."
"A fascinating exploration into the past.... moving and vivid."
“Sensitive, refined, intelligent… An unmitigated success.”
“A story crafted with luminous tenderness.”
"An absolute heartbreaker."
“A powerful exploration of family trauma.”
“A novel of rare grace and importance.”
"An intimate epic."
