The Elegance of the Hedgehog

Description

The enthralling international bestseller. We are in the center of Paris, in an elegant apartment building inhabited by bourgeois families. Renee, the concierge, is witness to the lavish but vacuous lives of her numerous employers. Outwardly she conforms to every stereotype of the concierge: fat, cantankerous, addicted to television. Yet, unbeknownst to her employers, Renee is a cultured autodidact who adores art, philosophy, music, and Japanese culture. With humor and intelligence she scrutinizes the lives of the building's tenants, who for their part are barely aware of her existence. Then there's Paloma, a twelve-year-old genius. She is the daughter of a tedious parliamentarian, a talented and startlingly lucid child who has decided to end her life on the sixteenth of June, her thirteenth birthday. Until then she will continue behaving as everyone expects her to behave: a mediocre pre-teen high on adolescent subculture, a good but not an outstanding student, an obedient if obstinate daughter. Paloma and Renee 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 Renee's timeworn disguise to the secret that haunts her. This is a moving, funny, triumphant novel that exalts the quiet victories of the inconspicuous among us.

Muriel Barbery is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Europa, 2008), Gourmet Rhapsody (Europa, 2009), and The Life of Elves (Europa, 2016). She has lived in Kyoto, Amsterdam, and Paris, and now lives in the French countryside. Alison Anderson's translations for Europa Editions include novels by Selim Nassib, Amelie Nothomb, and Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. She is the translator of The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Europa, 2008) and The Life of the Elves (Europa, 2016) by Muriel Barbery.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER INDIEBOUND TOP TEN BESTSELLER A WASHINGTON POST BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A BARNES AND NOBLE BET BOOK OF THE YEAR A CHICAGO SUN-TIMES FAVORITE BOOK OF THE YEAR Praise for The Elegance of the Hedgehog Gently satirical, exceptionally winning and inevitably bitersweet. --Michael Dirda, The Washington Post The Elegance of the Hedgehog is about love. But not the sappy, head-over-heels variety. Rather, it's about the love of one's friends. It's about the love you can experience when you connect with strangers. And it's about the possibility--but just that--of romantic love. --The Huffington Post Both [of the book's protagonists] create eloquent little essays on time, beauty and the meaning of life, Renee with the erudition and Paloma with adolescent brio. --The New York Times Astute social satire and abstruse German philosophy are rarely found together, but here they are in this ingenious work of fiction. --The Boston Globe In this supple novel of ideas, a best-seller in France...two autodidacts share an allergy to grammatical errors (the concierge considers a misplaced comma an 'underhanded attack') and a love of tea and moments of ineffable beauty. Barbery's sly wit, which bestows lightness on the most ponderous cogitations, keeps her tale aloft. --The New Yorker This fable of love, frienship and the beauty of art not only gives innocence a voice, but also shows what a powerful novel can do: transport, educate and, ultimately, console. --The Toronto Star The Elegance of the Hedgehog is a high-wire performance. --Los Angeles Times [The Elegance of the Hedgehog tells] a beautiful story with a large cast of fascinating, complicated characters whose behavior is delightfully unpredictable...No idea is too big or small to find a home in the Parisian apartment building where most of the characters live. --The Wall Street Journal This dark but redemptive novel, an international bestseller, marks the English debut of Normandy philosophy professor Barbery...By turns very funny (particularly in Paloma's sections) and heartbreaking, Barbery never allows either of her dour narrators to get too cerebral or too sentimental. Her simple plot and sudden denouement add up to a great deal more than the sum of their parts. --Publishers Weekly Hedgehog is really an international book, focused as it is on universal topics of childhood, philosophy, love, and art. --The Daily Beast This story, like all great tales, will break your heart, but it will also make you realize--or remember--that sometimes the pain is worth it. --Chicago Sun-Times