Philippe Besson

My brain is so, so happy when it is working on any sort of French language, anything.

And that is part of the reason why today we are going to talk about Philippe Besson's En l'absence des hommes.

This is a book that I was drawn to because I saw it on that front table of that same independent bookstore in New York City.

one that led me to lost lambs and recently my year in paris with gertrude stein in the absence of men had actually been there quite a few times i had walked in and seen it it's the cover the american cover i find so appealing i had read lie with me which came out in 2019 also obviously by besson it was um translated by molly ringwald which i thought was so interesting at the time and i loved that book Turns out it was somewhat autobiographical.

And it was a very, very bold kind of turn, twist that this book makes at the end.

And part of me was like, wow, did everybody just think the ending was great? So I went and I did a little more research.

And what I found out is that this is a book that Philippe Besson published in 1999.

This was his very first novel.