Her Lover

Handsome worldly and intelligent Solal holds a position of enviable power in 1930s Geneva. But as Under-Secretary-General of the League of Nations he has become bitterly disillusioned by international affairs and the self-serving people who surround him. His one hope for redemption is through love - and he embarks on the audacious seduction of Ariane the beautiful daydreaming wife of a dull-witted social-climbing employee of the League. In Her Lover Albert Cohen created a world humming with the many vivid and eccentric voices of its wonderfully observed characters. Brilliantly inventive and baroquely detailed this magnificent novel is a merciless satire of middle-class manners and ambitions and of the Byzantine machinations of global politics.