"Catherine Cusset's book caught a lot of me. I recognised myself" DAVID HOCKNEY "A perfect short expose of Hockney's life as seen through the eyes of an admiring novelist" Kirkus Reviews "Hers is an affirming vision of a restless talent propelled by optimism and chance" New York Times With clear, vivid prose, this meticulously researched novel draws an intimate, moving portrait of the most famous living English painter. Born in Bradford in 1937, David Hockney had to fight to become an artist. After leaving home for the Royal College of Art in London his career flourished, but he continued to struggle with a sense of not belonging, because of his homosexuality, which had yet to be decriminalised, and because of his inclination for a figurative style of art, which was not sufficiently "contemporary" to be valued. Trips to New York and California - where he would live for many years and paint his iconic swimming pools - introduced him to new scenes and new loves, beginning a journey that would take him through the fraught years of the AIDS epidemic. A compelling hybrid of novel and biography, David Hockney: A Life offers an insightful overview of a painter whose art is as accessible as it is compelling, and whose passion to create has never been deterred by heartbreak or illness or loss. Translated from the French by Teresa Lavender Fagan

WHAT IF SOMEONE WROTE A STORY ALL ABOUT YOU...A STORY THAT DETAILED YOUR LOVE LIFE, YOUR RELATIONSHIPS, YOUR DAILY COMINGS AND GOINGS? AND WHAT IF YOUR ANONYMOUS AUTHOR GOT IT ALL RIGHT?

Meet Jane. A professor at an academically outstanding college, she is recently divorced and feeling somewhat unsure, especially in terms of the opposite sex, having had several recent attempts to befriend men go awry.

As she leaves her apartment one day, she discovers a package addressed to her in the foyer of her building. Opening it, she discovers that it's a novel -- entitled "The Story of Jane." As she starts to read, she realizes that the novel is all about her -- her and her love life, or failure at love, to be more exact.

There's no name on the manuscript, no return address on the package. Suddenly uneasy and feeling much too exposed, she retreats to her apartment and sets about reading. At various points during the afternoon she stops to wonder -- sometimes in amazement, often in anger -- who could have known her well enough to write this story of her life. And where could that person be now?

As we peer over Jane's shoulder, reading along with her, we learn all about her life since arriving at Devayne University. We see her affairs, her marriage to the very sexy Eric, which ends in divorce, her disastrous friendship with the already married Francisco. One by one, Jane considers the men she has known, sure that one of them is the obsessed author and more than a little afraid that she might be in danger.

A startlingly fresh and innovative novel, "The Story of Jane" takes the reader on a roller-coaster ride of emotions and revelations as the layers of Jane's life are peeled away and theanonymous author becomes known.

Winner of the 1996 Walker Cowen Memorial Prize, Catherine Cusset's No Tomorrow traces the moral meaning of pleasure in several libertine works of the eighteenth-century--Watteau's Pelerinage a l'ile de Cythere, Prevost's Manon Lescaut, Crebillon's Les egarements du coeur et de l'esprit, the anonymous pornographic novel Therese philosophe, Diderot's La religieuse, and Vivant Denon's short story "Point de lendemain."

In this ambitious book, Cusset reframes the often misunderstood genre that celebrates what Casanova calls "the present enjoyment of the senses." She contends libertine works are not, as is commonly thought, characterized by the preaching of sexual pleasure but are instead linked by an "ethics of pleasure" that teaches readers that vanity and sensual enjoyment are part of their moral being. Developing Roland Barthes's concept of "the pleasure of the text," the author argues that the novel is a powerful vehicle for moral lessons, more so than philosophical or moral treatises, because it conveys such lessons through pleasure.

Cusset reads the proliferation of libertine novels as a reaction against the denial of pleasure in the literature and culture of the time. In the midst of the century's metaphysical impulse to simplify human psychology, these works focus on the moments in which human contradictions are revealed.

Cusset's analysis suggests that libertine novels offered the eighteenth century a more complex picture of moral being and ultimately contributed a lesson of tolerance to the Enlightenment.

Winner of the 1996 Walker Cowen Memorial Prize, Catherine Cusset's No Tomorrow traces the moral meaning of pleasure in several libertine works of the eighteenth-century-Watteau's Pelerinage a l'ile de Cythere, Prevost's Manon Lescaut, Crebillon's Les egarements du coeur et de l'esprit, the anonymous pornographic novel Therese philosophe, Diderot's La religieuse, and Vivant Denon's short story ""Point de lendemain."" In this ambitious book, Cusset reframes the often misunderstood genre that celebrates what Casanova calls ""the present enjoyment of the senses."" She contends libertine works are not, as is commonly thought, characterized by the preaching of sexual pleasure but are instead linked by an ""ethics of pleasure"" that teaches readers that vanity and sensual enjoyment are part of their moral being. Developing Roland Barthes's concept of ""the pleasure of the text,"" the author argues that the novel is a powerful vehicle for moral lessons, more so than philosophical or moral treatises, because it conveys such lessons through pleasure. Cusset reads the proliferation of libertine novels as a reaction against the denial of pleasure in the literature and culture of the time. In the midst of the century's metaphysical impulse to simplify human psychology, these works focus on the moments in which human contradictions are revealed. Cusset's analysis suggests that libertine novels offered the eighteenth century a more complex picture of moral being and ultimately contributed a lesson of tolerance to the Enlightenment.