The Devil in the Flesh
The tragic and complicated French romance about a teenage boy who seduces the wife of a soldier during World War I—and one of the most startling literary debuts of all time
A Penguin Classic
As the First World War reaches its final year, an illicit love affair is beginning between a sixteen-year-old boy and a young woman who is married to a soldier at the front. They meet secretly in her flat on the outskirts of Paris, in cornfields and on river banks. When she receives letters from her husband, they burn them together. Intoxicated by passion, they cannot bear to end their affair, even when it causes a scandal among their friends and neighbours. Instead, they can only hurtle towards tragedy.
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