A pocket-sized ode to writing by one of France's most notable new voices. Preface by award-winning author and translator Lauren Elkin (author of Flaneuse: Women Walk the City, Chatto & Windus, BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week) The answer to Hemmingway's A Moveable Feast, from an up-and-coming French female voice aged 30, whose latest novel is coming out in English published by Europa Editions. Infused with a love of literature, the book is a celebration of exchange between Francophone and Anglophone cultures past and present: a book for writers and all book lovers. A portrait of the working-class artist by an award-winning European and Anglophile writer. There will be an online video interview of the author, promoted in collaboration with the European Literature Network and the French Institute sales in France are 8,000-10,000 (tbc) Best books of summer 2020, Tatler

'The best early training for a writer is an unhappy childhood,' Hemingway famously said. Julia Kerninon, one of France's most acclaimed young novelists, tells an altogether different story in a poetic account of her pursuit. Her vibrant ode to reading, and to writing as a space for discovery (as well as a 'respectable occupation') entwines the French and Anglo-Saxon literary traditions as she journeys fluidly through her formative years. From her native Brittany to the city of Shakespeare and Company, to a seaside cafe on the Atlantic coast, to Budapest and back, the author conjures a feminine answer to A Moveable Feast.