Sex, lies and philosophy on the Paris left bank
A new French novel settles scores among the bed-hopping intelligentsia
A FRENCH LEFT-BANK philosopher runs off with his father’s younger lover, who is herself now married to an ex-president, during his own failed marriage to a novelist, the daughter of another Parisian philosopher, who was his father’s best friend. Were a scriptwriter to pitch the plot, it would be dismissed for convoluted implausibility. Except that this story, which captures with no apparent irony the intertwined lives of Latin Quarter intellectuals, is true.
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Sex, lies and philosophy”
From the September 12th 2020 edition
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