The Passion of Mademoiselle S.: Letters to a Lover
Jean-Yves Berthault
Translated by Adriana Hunter
Paris, 1928: two lovers are conducting a secret and deeply erotic affair.
Charles is a married man with a respectable office job when he embarks on a journey of wild sexual discovery with Simone, whose voracious appetite for the erotic is not confined to the bedroom, but is poured into the illicit letters she writes to him over the course of two years.
This extraordinary collection of letters, found in a dusty cellar decades later, reveals not just a carnal relationship but an obsessive and destructive love that pushed the boundaries and was, in many ways, ahead of its time.
The Passion of Mademoiselle S. paints a vivid portrait of a violently passionate love affair that evolves in astounding and unexpected ways. Framed by illuminating insights from its discoverer, Jean-Yves Berthault, this correspondence opens a window on another time and an exceptional woman whose voice echoes down the century and still resonates today.
andThe Passion of Mademoiselle S.
‘The letters read like the book many of us hoped Fifty Shades of Grey might be: edgy, emotionally revealing and unafraid. It also offers far richer human narrative without the creepy power dynamics that make EL James’s phenomenally successful series uncomfortable in all the wrong ways.’
