The passionate love affair that triggered a revolution, and the story of a remarkable woman living in extraordinary times

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.

Anne Berest
The great granddaughter of Spanish-born artist Francis Picabia and French Resistance fighter Gabriele Buffet-Picabia (Marcel Duchamps lover and muse), Anne Berest is an actor and author. She has been profiled in Vogue (France), Haaretz newspaper, and has also been a Chanel ambassador. With her sister Claire Berest, Berest wrote a biography of her great grandmother entitled Gabriele. She is also the author of a novel based on Francoise Sagan and the bestselling work of nonfiction How to be Parisian Wherever You Are...

Claire Berest
Claire Berest is the author of five novels, including Rien n’est noir, winner of the ELLE Readers Grand Prize, and her most recent, Artifice (Hachette, 2024), and two works of nonfiction.