The Life of Henry Brulard

<i>The Life of Henry Brulard</i> is the autobiography of one of France's greatest writers, Stendhal, author of <i>The Red and the Black</i> and <i>The Charterhouse of Parma</i>. Here, writing at white heat and with such ferocious honesty and indignation that his book was to remain unpublishable for more than a century after its composition, Stendhal revisits his unhappy childhood in a stuffy provincial town and bares his rebellious heart. His adored mother, who died when he was only seven; a father devoted only to his own social ambitions; the aunt whose daily cruelties passed for care: these are among the indelible portraits in a work that captures the sights, sounds, places, and characters of Stendhal's youth, its pleasures and sorrows, with preternatural clarity and immediacy. Full of dazzling images and burning emotions, <i>The Life of Henry Brulard</i> is a vivid memoir that is also an extraordinary work of the imagination.