The tragic and complicated French romance of a teenage boy who seduces a soldier's wife during the First World War—and one of the most amazing literary debuts of all timeA Penguin ClassicAs the First World War reaches its final year, an unlawful love affair begins between a seventeen-year-old boy and a young woman who is married to a front soldier. Secretly, they meet in her flat on the outskirts of Paris, in cornfields and on the banks of rivers. They burn them together, when she receives letters from her husband. Passion-intoxicated they cannot bear to end their affair, even if it causes a scandal among their friends and neighbours. Instead, they can only hurtle to tragedy.Written in spare, haunting prose when Raymond Radiguet was still a teenager, and loosely based on his life, The Devil in the Flesh became an instant bestseller and his author was hailed as a genius, before dying tragically at the age of twenty. It is a work of shocking imagery and subtle beauty about power, betrayal, and passion that expresses all of adolescence's anguish and joy.... Read More
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