Évelyne Bloch-Dano invites us to discover around one hundred writers’ houses in France and worldwide, from Combray for Proust, to Berlin for Brecht, via London for Dickens. This erudite, enlightened and yet playful book aims to establish the connection between a house and a writer’s literary universe, a place and a life. These pages are as much an invitation to read as to travel, and they include ten hand-drawn illustrations.
The biographer and essayist Évelyne Bloch-Dano is the author of many award-winning and frequently translated titles including, most memorably, Madame Zola (1997, French Elle magazine’s Reader’s Prize), Flora Tristan, la femme-messie (2001, François Billetdoux Prize), Madame Proust (2004, Prix Renaudot for an essay), Le Dernier Amour de George Sand (2010), Une jeunesse de Marcel Proust (2017), as well as La Fabuleuse Histoire des légumes (2008), Jardins de papier (2015), and the acclaimed personal accounts La Biographe (2007) and Porte de Champerret (2013).
Mettre en relation une maison et l’univers littéraire d’un écrivain, les relier à sa vie, tel est le magnifique projet de cet ouvrage érudit, éclairé mais aussi distrayant. Ces pages sont autant une invitation à la lecture qu’au voyage. C’est un peu de cette liberté, entre vagabondage et ancrage, qu’elles nous offrent.