Born in a bookbinder’s back-shop in the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, Jean Servien loses his mother young and grows up on dreams. An indifferent scholar and a clerk with literary longings, he falls hopelessly in love with an actress, and his romantic aspirations collide with the shabby realities of Paris and the turmoil of 1870.
An early, melancholy novel by the Nobel laureate, tender and ironic about youthful illusion. Download the free EPUB.