Translated into English for the first time, Claire Berest's award-winning novel is a striking fictional imagining of the vibrant life of one of the world's most enigmatic and beloved artists: Frida Kahlo.

This is the story of Diego and Frida, who couldn't live without each other.

They meet at a party. She knows everything about him, about his mythology, and he knows nothing of her, she is nobody.

He is Mexico's greatest artist. She drinks like a sailor, wears flowers in her hair, talks openly about sex, loves attending protests and parties to wake the dead. She is from Coyoacan, twenty years his junior and with a broken spine to boot.

Even when her body is wracked with pain, she paints.

There were two great accidents in her life. The first was when that streetcar hit her . . . but by far the worst was meeting him.

A breathtaking book confirming C laire Berest's inexhaustible talent as a storyteller' Elle

'An astonishing thriller' Libération

Something strange is happening in museums across Paris.

A white horse appears in the library of the Pompidou C entre. Then stuffed wolves are displayed in a gallery, dressed in fine garments and drinking tea.

The authorities are baffled - particularly when investigations lead to suspended police officer Abel Bac. Since being dismissed for unknown reasons, Abel has been wandering the streets of Paris, haunted by a recurring nightmare and hoping to lose himself in the city.

But following Abel leads to Mila, the mysterious artist at the heart of this enigma - and to a hidden darkness rising to the surface of the city.

As soon becomes clear, nothing about this chain of events has been a coincidence...

Translated by Sophie Lewis.

'Terrific! Set in modern Paris, this literary thriller invigoratingly combines questions of identity, shenanigans in the art world, love and murder' MICHÈLE ROBERTS

'Deliciously unique and unpredictable ... this novel blossoms like a poisonous flower' Le Journal du Dimanche

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.