Beloved, Daughter

Nir Ratzkovsky’s unique novel was inspired by one of the most famous correspondences in French literature: the letters that the Marquise de Sévigné, a brilliant 17th century noblewoman, wrote to her beloved daughter. It also revives the colorful time of Louis XIV, the Sun King, with its literary salons, palaces and courtesans, wars and rebellions. In April 1696, the Marquise de Sévigné dies at the age of 70 while on a visit to her daughter, Françoise de Grignan, in Provence. Two weeks later, her son Charles receives the sad news at his chateau in Brittany and immediately sets out. When he arrives, he finds something that he was never meant to see—the hundreds of letters that his mother wrote to his sister for 25 years, letters of obsessive and unrequited love. When Charles, Françoise and her husband read the letters, they revisit their past and confront each other—Charles, who always had to make do with second place; his sister, suffocated by her mother’s stifling love, and her husband, who finds himself trapped by emotions that he cannot grasp. Ratzkovsky cleverly combines fiction and history to create vibrant psychological and emotional dramas that are as relevant today as they were 350 years ago.