I want to acknowledge my book companions:
Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter, translated by James Kirkup, HarperPerennial Modern Classics, New York, 2005
Annie Ernaux, Retour à Yvetot, Éditions du Mauconduit, Paris, 2013
——Une Femme, Gallimard, Paris, 1987
Michel de Montaigne, The Essays: A Selection, translated by MA Screech, Penguin Classics, London, 1993
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Confessions, translated by JM Cohen, Penguin Classics, London, 1953
Madame de Sévigné, Selected Letters, translated by Leonard Tancock, Penguin Classics, London, 1982
Stendhal, The Life of Henry Brulard, translated by John Sturrock, New York Review of Books, New York, 1995
And:
Colette, Rainy Moon, translated by Antonia White, Penguin, London, 1976
Antoine Compagnon, Un Été Avec Montaigne, Éditions des Équateurs, Paris, 2013
Sarah Kofman, Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, translated by Ann Smock, University of Nebraska Press, Nebraska, 1996
Marcel Pagnol, My Father’s Glory and My Mother’s Castle, translated by Rita Barisse, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 1986
Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time, translated by CK Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, Vintage, London, 2002
Voltaire, Candide, translated by John Butt, Penguin Classics, London, 1979
I also want to acknowledge lines from ‘Stings’, in Ariel by Sylvia Plath, Faber Paperbacks, London, 1974.
Many thanks are due to my agent, Clare Forster, for encouraging me to write the Paris book; to my publisher, Alexandra Payne, for her faith in it; and to Ian See for his insightful remarks. I also want to thank the wonderful Jo Jarrah for her brilliant editing and Bettina Richter for her endless enthusiasm and determination. And most of all, infinite thanks to Anthony Reeder, my first reader and favourite companion. I hope those dedicated to the facts will forgive the layering of time in this account of my life in Paris.