Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan

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Late into the night we talked of love and its complications

Bonjour Tristesse is the story of seventeen-year-old Cécile, and one long, hot summer that will change her life.

Cécile leads a golden, carefree existence with her widowed playboy father and his mistresses. On holiday on the French Riviera, she is seduced by the sun, the sand and her first lover. But when her father decides to remarry, their perfect world becomes clouded by tragedy.

Françoise Sagan was born in France. Bonjour Tristesse, published in 1954 when she was just nineteen, became a succès 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.

Translated by Heather Lloyd