Chéri (Annotated)

First published in 1920, Chéri is one of Colette's most incisive explorations of desire, aging, and social performance in the world of Belle Époque and postwar Paris. The novel follows Léa, a cultivated courtesan nearing fifty, and her beautiful young lover Chéri, whose marriage exposes the fragility beneath their seemingly elegant detachment. Written in Colette's famously exact, sensuous prose, t...