rue d'Odessa

I settled down and set to work on still another novel.

Soon after my arrival, Gerald Kelly took me to a restaurant called Le Charblanc in the Rue d'Odessa, near the Gare Montparnasse, where a number of artists were in the habit of dining, and from then on I dined there every night.

I have described the place elsewhere, and in some detail in the novel to which these pages are meant to serve as preface, so that I need not here say more about it.

As a rule, the same people came in every night, but now and then others came, perhaps only once, perhaps two or three times.

In 1958, Julliard published L'Empire Celeste, for which Mali Joris that year won the Prix Féminin.

The novel is set in the house of that name in the Rue d'Odessa in Paris, where the co-owners of the property meet every Monday evening for a literary reunion organized by Stéphane Morani, the pianist in the band that plays in the local café, the Brasserie Dorée.

Stéphane is married to Louise, a co-owner of the Empire Celeste, who is having an affair with Henry, a successful painter.

Martine, a Dowdy department store assistant who rents a small attic room in the Empire Celeste, is infatuated with Stéphane.