Clara Reads Proust

Stéphane Carlier, Polly Mackintosh

$24.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Pushkin Press
01 December 2025

Fiction & Literature; Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945); Fiction: special features

'An elegant and quietly lyrical charting of a life changed by books' Irish Times

'Full of charm, sensitivity and intelligence. Brilliant.' Antoine Laurain, author of The Red Noteboook

Clara is a hairdresser at Cindy Coiffure, a sleepy French salon with an identity crisis. Her relationship is fizzling out. Her tanoholic boss Madame Habib worships Jacques Chirac and talks longingly of her days in Paris. And now Madame Lévy-Leroyer wants to go blonde. Clara can't help but wonder if there's more to life than this . . .

Everything changes when a customer leaves behind the first volume of In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. As Clara reads, she discovers a new world. And slowly but surely, she will work out who she wants to be.

By: Stéphane Carlier
Translated by: Polly Mackintosh
Imprint: Pushkin Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 198mm, Width: 129mm,
ISBN: 9781805334842
ISBN 10: 1805334840
Pages: 176
Publication Date: 01 December 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Stéphane Carlier was born in 1971 in Argenteuil, France. Clara Reads Proust is his eighth novel and the first to be translated into English. Polly Mackintosh is an editor and a translator from French. She has translated the work of Alain Ducasse, Antoine Laurain, Serge Joncour and early French feminist Marie-Louise Gagneur. She currently lives in London.

Reviews for Clara Reads Proust

'An elegant and quietly lyrical charting of a life changed by books' - Irish Times 'Full of charm, sensitivity and intelligence. Brilliant' - Antoine Laurain, author of The Red Notebook