Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... The Only Son (2006)by Stephane Audeguy
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I would say that this book is a 4-starer on its own, but having Audeguy's first, totally unrelated 'Theory of Clouds', this becomes 5 star material. I will read everything this man publishes. ( ) A fictional biography of Francois Rousseau, the brother who Jean-Jacques mentions only once in his classic Confessions. Francois is a sensualist who finds a mentor in an aging, decadent aristocrat. Eventually his libertine lifestyle causes his conservative father to disown him and he decends into the multitude of unusual characters and vices available in revolutionary Paris. Audeguy does a masterful job of painting an authentic sensualist and his strange innocence in a world torn apart by revolution. One of the best books I've read in the last 10 years. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Publisher SeriesGallimard, Folio (4654)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions his older brother François only two times in his classic Confessions. In The Only Son, Stephane 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. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)843.92Literature French and related languages French fiction Modern Period 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |