Gabriele - Signed Bookplate First Edition

by Berest, Anne | Historical fiction
Published 08/05/2025 by Europa Editions (UK) Ltd in the United Kingdom
Hardback | 432 pages
210 x 135mm | 0g

Signed Bookplate First Edition - Hardback - Publishes May 8th

An atmospheric, exuberant novel about love and sex, art and revolution, experimentation and creativity from the best-selling author of The Postcard, Anne Berest, and her sister, the acclaimed novelist Claire Berest, based on the life of their great grandmother.  

The year is 1908, the height of the Belle Epoque, and a brilliant, young French woman named Gabriële, newly graduated from the most elite music school in Europe, meets a volcanic Spanish artist named Francis. Following a whirlwind romance, they marry and fall headlong into a Paris that is experimenting with new forms of living, thinking, and creating. Soon after marrying Francis, Gabriële meets Marcel, another young artist, five years her junior. Soon, Francis, Marcel, and Gabriële are all three involved in a fervent affair that will change the course of art history and redefine the avant-garde.

Surrealism, Dada, and Abstraction are among the new artistic practices and new ideas that emerge from this electric love triangle in the following decade, during which the Belle Epoque sours and the world descends into the devastation of World War I. Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Gabriele Buffet—the protagonists of this brilliantly imagined “true novel”—are vividly reimagined by the Berests.

Moving between Paris, New York, Berlin, Zurich, Barcelona, and Saint-Tropez, Gabriële is as audacious, uninhibited, and unforgettable as its central character, the mercurial, pioneering Gabriële Buffet.