The Only Son

Name: The Only Son
Brand: Recyclivre
Author: Stéphane Audeguy
ISBN: 9780151013296

Stéphane Audeguy

08/09/2008
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

NC (0 avis)

Couverture de The Only Son par Stéphane Audeguy

Résumé

Présentation de l'éditeur Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions his older brother François only two times in his classic Confessions. In The Only Son, Stéphane Audeguy resurrects Rousseau's forgotten brother in a picaresque tale that brings to life the secret world of eighteenth-century Paris. Instructed at an early age in the philosophy of libertinage by a decadent aristocrat and later apprenticed to a clock maker, François is ultimately disowned by his family and flees to Paris's underworld. There he finds work in a brothel that caters to politicians and clergy and begins his personal study of the varieties of sexual desire—to its most arcane proclivities. Audeguy uses the libertine's progress to explore the interplay between the individual and society, much in the tradition of Jean-Jacques, but with a very different emphasis. Bold, erotic, and historically fascinating, The Only Son is, in many ways, the anti-Confessions—François' own, decidedly different, portrait of human nature. Revue de presse UK PRAISE FOR THE ONLY SON "Audeguy's novel moves along smartly and is told with relish, an engaging wryness of manner and bold piacaresque inventiveness . . . an absorbing and intelligent entertainment."—The Times Literary Supplement (London)PRAISE FOR THE THEORY OF CLOUDS "Beautiful, sensuous, cerebral, this novel is the work of a major talent."—The Seattle Times "A subtle mixture of history and fiction, tragedy and comedy."—The Washington Post Book World