Monsieur

Céleste Albaret was Marcel Proust's housekeeper in his last years, when he retreated from the world to devote himself to In Search of Lost Time. She could imitate his voice to perfection, and Proust himself said to her, "You know everything about me." Her reminiscences of her employer present an intimate picture of the daily life of a great writer who was also a deeply peculiar man, while Madame Albaret herself proves to be a shrewd and engaging companion.

From their initial online encounter, through a shared appreciation of erotic literature, to the highly explicit and shocking story of their brief relationship, Emma Becker charts the labyrinths of lust of Ellie and 'Monsieur', set against the murky landscape of Facebook, text messages and the Pigalle hotel room in which they meet every Tuesday morning. Why do we do things we know are wrong? Why do May-to-December romances invariably go wrong? Why does the allure of forbidden sex cloud our judgments? Emma Becker doesn't come up with all the answers, but provides a fascinating and poignant tale, which will turn Monsieur into the new Lolita.

'Monsieur Dior: Once Upon A Time' is an exclusive behind-the-scenes look into the ten years Christian Dior ran his esteemed house. As women were starved for glamour following World War II, Dior's New Look was revolutionary in bringing femininity back to fashion with a bold use of fabric and silhouetted lines. In the short time he ran the house, Dior rose to superstardom and managed to expand his empire to perfumes, jewellery, and hosiery while opening boutiques all over the world. Author Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni interviewed dozens of people who had a direct relationship with the fashion designer such as Jacqueline de Ribes, Olivia de Havilland, John Fairchild, Pierre Cardin, Victoire Doutreleau, and many others, including his vendeuses or saleswomen, society clients, models, and muses, giving readers unique intimate insight into how this captivating house operated. With dazzling images by photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lord Snowdon, and Willy Maywald, as well as neverbefore-seen materials from the Dior Archives, this account is a fresh and surprising view into the House of Dior and life of its brilliant founder. 'Monsieur Dior: Once Upon A Time' is elegantly presented in a Dior grey box with silver tissue paper and a grosgrain bookmark.

A hilarious, candid account of what life in France is actually like, from a writer for Vanity Fair and GQ Americans love to love Paris. We buy books about how the French parent, why French women don't get fat, and how to be Parisian wherever you are. While our work hours increase every year, we think longingly of the six weeks of vacation the French enjoy, imagining them at the seaside in stripes with plates of fruits de mer. John von Sothen fell in love with Paris through the stories his mother told of her year spent there as a student. And then, after falling for and marrying a French waitress he met in New York, von Sothen moved to Paris. But fifteen years in, he's finally ready to admit his mother's Paris is mostly a fantasy. In this hilarious and delightful collection of essays, von Sothen walks us through real life in Paris--not only myth-busting our Parisian daydreams but also revealing the inimitable and too often invisible pleasures of family life abroad. Relentlessly funny and full of incisive observations, Monsieur Mediocre is ultimately a love letter to France--to its absurdities, its history, its ideals--but it's a very French love letter: frank, smoky, unsentimental. It is a clear-eyed ode to a beautiful, complex, contradictory country from someone who both eagerly and grudgingly calls it home.

How do we cope with the public and private disaster? Jasmina Tesanovic on being bombed in Belgrade -- "The Diary of a Political Idiot"; Ian Jack on good behavior aboard the Titanic; Joy Williams on the necessary death of her dog Hawk; Edward Said on the shame of his body; James Buchan inside Saddam's Iraq. Plus: Edmund White, and the debut of a novelist unknown when this issue was published -- Zadie Smith.

Fiction. LGBT Studies. French Literature. Translated from the French by Eva Richter. In Jean Lorrain's MONSIEUR DE BOUGRELON, an eccentric, outmoded dandy leads ennui-filled French tourists around misty Amsterdam. Guiding them through sailors' bars, whorehouses, and costume galleries, Monsieur de Bougrelon recounts hallucinatory stories of his past and delves into his heroic friendship with his aristocratic companion Monsieur de Mortimer. MONSIEUR DE BOUGRELON is a unique character: loquacious, proud, a leftover from an earlier age, wearing garish outfits and makeup that drips. To his speechless audience, he waxes nostalgic about his life as an exile in Holland, as well as what he calls imaginary pleasures - obsessions with incongruous people, animals, and objects. These obsessions are often sexual or border on the sexual, leading to shocking, surreal scenes. MONSIEUR DE BOUGRELON also enthuses over his beautiful friend Monsieur de Mortimer, making this novella one of the rare works of the nineteenth century to broach homosexuality in a meaningful way, years before Jean Cocteau and Jean Genet. Originally published in French in 1897, MONSIEUR DE BOUGRELON is now available in English translation for the first time. Its inventiveness and sheer decadence find kindred spirits in the novels of Comte de Lautréamont, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and even Louis-Ferdinand Céline, while the novella's indulgent language and unconventional vision of art and sex embody the best of fin-de-siècle literature. It is, in the novella's own words, a true boudoir of the dead.

He's always pulling naughty pranks until he meets up with a wise old Wizard and gets a taste of his own medicine!

Traumatized by memories of his war-ravaged country, his son and daughter-in-law dead, Monsieur Linh travels to a foreign land to bring the child in his arms to safety. To begin with, he is too afraid to leave the refugee centre, but the first time he braves the freezing cold to walk the streets of this strange, fast-moving town, he encounters Monsieur Bark, a widower whose dignified sorrow mirrors his own. Though they have no shared language, an instinctive friendship is forged; but Monsieur Linh's stay in the dormitory is only temporary. Sooner or later he and his child must find a permanent home. Delicate and restrained, but with an extraordinary twist, Monsieur Linh and His Child is an immensely moving novel of perfect simplicity, by the author of Brodeck's Report.

CHAPTER I Monsieur Bergeret was seated at table taking his frugal evening meal. Riquet lay at his feet on a tapestry cushion. Riquet had a religious soul; he rendered divine honours to mankind. He regarded his master as very good and very great. But it was chiefly when he saw him at table that he realized the sovereign greatness and goodness of Monsieur Bergeret. If, to Riquet, all things pertaining to food were precious and impressive, those pertaining to the food of man were sacred. He venerated the dining-room as a temple, the table as an altar. During meals he kept his place at his master’s feet, in silence and immobility. “It’s a spring chicken,” said old Angélique as she placed the dish upon the table. “Good. Be kind enough to carve it, then,” said Monsieur Bergeret, who was a poor hand with weapons and quite hopeless as a carver. “Willingly,” said Angélique, “but carving isn’t woman’s work, it’s the gentlemen who ought to carve poultry.” “I don’t know how to carve.” “Monsieur ought to know.” This dialogue was by no means new. Angélique and her master exchanged similar remarks every time that game or poultry came to the table. It was not flippantly, it was certainly not to save herself trouble, that the old servant persisted in offering her master the carving-knife as a token of the respect which was due to him. In the peasant class from which she had sprung and also in the little middle-class households where she had been in service, it was a tradition that it was the master’s duty to carve. The faithful old soul’s respect for tradition was profound. She did not think it right that Monsieur Bergeret should fall short of it, that he should delegate to her the performance of so authoritative a function, that he should fail to carve at his own table, since he was not grand enough to employ a butler to do it for him, like the Brécés, the Bonmonts and other such folk in town or country. She knew the obligations which honour imposes on a citizen who dines at home, and she never failed to impress them upon Monsieur Bergeret.

Reproduction of the original: The Love of Monsieur by George Gibbs