<div><p>Before Françoise Sagan the literary icon there was Françoise Quoirez, an eighteen-year-old Parisian girl, who wrote a novel.</p><p>This intimate narrative charts the months in 1954 leading up to the publication of the legendary<i>Bonjour Tristesse</i>. We encounter Françoise, her family and friends close-up, in a post-war world that is changing radically; and Mlle Quoirez, in her new guise of Françoise Sagan, will be at the heart of that social change.</p><p><b>Anne Berest </b>was writing her third novel when Sagan's son, Denis Westhoff, asked her to write a book to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of<i>Bonjour Tristesse</i>.</p></div>