The Light of a Woman

Romain Gary (1914–1980) is the best-known French writer—of Russian origin, a Resistance member, a close personal friend of Charles de Gaulle, and a major diplomat. After writing almost three dozen novels, Gary became famous as the creator of the most notorious and tragic literary hoax of the 20th century: he reinvented himself as Émile Ajar and thereby became the only two-time winner of the Prix Goncourt.

“… I must leave you. Another will come—and that will be me. Go to her, find her, give her what I leave you; it must remain…” A tale of true love and the highest faithfulness, possible only when the absence of love becomes equal to the absence of life: such is “The Light of a Woman,” a novel in which a man’s autumn turns into his second spring.