Cohen's Literature
Through four different books, Cohen's fiction can be considered as one long autobiographical fiction. It is the story of the radiant Solal - Cohen's double - the handsome and successful civil servant of the League of Nations whose charismatic identity is a constant struggle between his Jewish roots and his social status.
His masterpiece, Belle du Seigneur, originally included the novel that was later published as Les valeureux. Belle du Seigneur is called "the book of love", and tells Solal's passionate, cruel yet realistic love affair with Ariane Deume - a married non-Jewish woman. In 1968, the novel received the French Academy award. Since then, the novel has been one of the biggest sellers of the prestigious Gallimard White Collection.
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Famous quotes containing the words cohen and/or literature:
“History is a needle
for putting men asleep
anointed with the poison
Of all they want to keep.”
—Leonard Cohen (b. 1934)
“A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time—this one, for instance—as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)