According to Agence France-Presse, the legendary French writer Françoise Sagan
(Francoise Sagan)
A novel that was "lost" before his death, last Thursday
(September 19)
Published in France, Agence France-Presse said that "this is the biggest surprise of the year in french literature".
Four Dimensions of the Heart (tentative translation, French les quatre coins du coeur', English translation of four corners of the heart) book cover, published by the French company Plon Books.
The two-hundred-page novel, titled The Four Dimensions of the Heart, becomes Sagan's final surprise, and like her first novel, Hello, Sorrow, which brought her a lifetime of fame and fortune, this novel also focuses on presenting the picture of life in which the rich class seeks liberation in spiritual emptiness. The creation of the novel was not made public during Sagan's lifetime, by her son Denis Veshhoff
（denis westhoff）
A draft of the unfinished novel was discovered after her death in 2004.
The novel tells the story of an unusual love triangle in which businessman Ludovic Cresson made his fortune in the vegetable business. Like the author of the story, he had a serious car accident and was followed by an entangled relationship with his mother-in-law. The plot is also similar to "Hello, Sorrow", the rich and idle class seeks some "shocking" emotional stimulation in the emptiness, which is very in line with Sagan's consistent writing style: idle class, emptiness, melancholy, and of course sex.
But the French just liked her, and she became "the girl who was spoiled by all the French." At the age of 17, when her peers were still working hard for the college entrance examination, she bought herself a Jaguar sports car with the large writing fees earned from "Hello, Sorrow". In the spoils of the French people, the spring breeze is triumphant, and the wheels are rolling. Unfortunately, in 1957, she was in a car accident driving an Aston Martin car and fell into a coma. But that didn't stop her car fanaticism, and after she was discharged from the hospital, she was still full of speed and passion, going in and out of the major theaters, bars and casinos from Paris to Monte Carlo.
According to her son, there is much irony in the novel, but it is often satirical for the sake of satire, with a distinctly Sagan style
（saganesque）
Seek a shocking adventure, full of pomp and fantasy, with a baroque literary style. Weishof, who is already a well-known photographer, said he found the two-volume manuscript in a drawer. He believes the discovery is a "miracle" in a series of Sagan estate lawsuits and says Sagan's estate was "confiscated, sold, donated and acquired in dubious ways."
In the preface, Weishof revealed that the outlines of some words were blurred due to the large number of photocopies of the draft. He brought the manuscript to Sagan's former editor, but refused to publish it. Wishhoff then decided to organize and supplement the manuscript himself, such as adding words or even full pages of paragraphs that he considered essential, and was careful not to destroy the style and tone of the novel. Exactly how effective the revision is, I ask you Sagan fans to judge it yourself.
Author 丨 Wang Saibei
Editor 丨 Xu Yuedong
Proofreading 丨 Zhai Yongjun