Bonjour Tristesse and A Certain Smile

Sagan’s stylish, shimmering and amoral tale of adolescence and betrayal on the French RivieraPublished when she was only eighteen, Fran oise Sagan’s astonishing first novel Bonjour Tristesse became an instant bestseller. It tells the story of Cecile, who leads a carefree life with her widowed father and his young mistresses until, one hot summer on the Riviera, he decides to remarry – with devastating consequences. In A Certain Smile Dominique, a young woman bored with her lover, begins an encounter with an older man that unfolds in unexpected and troubling ways.

Fran oise Sagan was born in France in 1935. Bonjour tristesse (1954), published when she was just 19, became a succ s de scandale and even earned its author a papal denunciation. Sagan went on to write many other novels, plays and screenplays, and died in 2004.