Colette

(1873-1954) French novelist, belonging, in time, to the generation of authors that includes Marcel Proust, Paul Valéry, André Gide, and Paul Claudel. Colette's career as a writer spanned from her early 20s to her mid-70s. Her main themes were joys and pains of love and female sexuality in the male-dominated world. All her works are more or less autobiographical - Colette intentionally blurred the boundaries between fiction and fact in her life. She wrote over 50 novels and scores of short stories. [Read more]

The Ripening Seed
Translated by Roger Senhouse
Farrar, Straus, & Cudahy, 1955 (PhP 100.00)
There are just three characters in "The Ripening Seed": Philippe and Vinca, two young friends, and Madame Dallery, their neighbor, who, during the long sweet summer nights, initiates the boy into the world of sexual mysteries and pleasures. The scene is Britanny, and the seacoast pervades every page, as it does the lives of the two friends, who have visited it every year since they were small children. In the few weeks of their summer holiday Philippe and Vinca see the death of their childhood and learn the true significance of their new and uneasy feelings for each other.