Her Lover

Description

Handsome, worldly and intelligent, Solal holds a position of enviable power in 1930s Geneva. But as Under-Secretary-General of the League of Nations, he has become bitterly disillusioned by international affairs and the self-serving people who surround him. His one hope for redemption is through love - and he embarks on the audacious seduction of Ariane, the beautiful, daydreaming wife of a dull-witted, social-climbing employee of the League. In Her Lover, Albert Cohen created a world humming with the many vivid and eccentric voices of its wonderfully observed characters. Brilliantly inventive and baroquely detailed, this magnificent novel is a merciless satire of middle-class manners and ambitions, and of the Byzantine machinations of global politics.

ALBERT COHEN was born in Greece in 1895. His novel-cycle began with Solal (1930) and Mangeclous (1938), and ended with Belle du Seigneur (1968) and Les Valeureux (1969). He died in 1981. DAVID COWARD is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Leeds, England. He has written widely on the literature of France since 1700, and is a regular contributor to The Times Literary Supplement. He won a Scott-Moncrieff prize for his edition of Belle du Seigneur.