"Barthes par Barthes is a genuinely post-modern autobiography, an innovation in the art of autobiography comparable in its theoretical implications for our understanding of autobiography to Sartre's The Words."--Hayden White, University of California

    Outsiders, even their parents, cannot tell them apart, and call them Jean-Paul. The mysterious bond between them excludes all others; they speak their own language; they are one perfectly harmonious unit; they are, in all innocence, lovers.For Paul, this unity is paradise, but as they grow up Jean rebels against it. He takes a mistress and deserts his brother, but Paul sets out to follow him in a pilgrimage that leads all around the world, through places that reflect their separation--the mirrored halls of Venice, the Zen gardens of Japan, the newly divided city of Berlin. The exquisite love story of Jean-Paul is set against the ugliness and pain of human existence. " Gemini" is a novel of extraordinary proportions, intricate images, and profound thought, in which Michel Tournier tells his fascinating story with an irresistible humor.

    Lydie Tristan, a renegade born into a postwar European world that craves stability, is nourished in childhood by exotic fantasies while menaced by real-life teachers and parents who lash out with the fury of primitive demons.In the soon-to-end innocence of the early 1960s, Lydie's world is shaped by: Polline, her friend in arms, with whom she discovers Rin Tin Tin, boys in black leather, and the famous Drugstore; the prostitute Hughette, who talks of philosophy as easily as of the hair-raising episodes of her own youth and the tricks she turned; Abel, her stand-in pimp, a homosexual who exposes Lydie and friend to the world of art and culture and Willhelm Reich; her Aunt Ro, sweet and spacey, a fairy godmother who facilitates her revolt, herself rumored to have murdered her husband soon after their wedding; and her grandfather, who bequeaths to her deluxe editions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which she cherishes as talismans of her future calling. With the rigor and tenderness that characterize Francois Truffaut's film The 400 Blows, Cerf follows her innocent enfant terrible along the path of rebellion through the early '60s, which ultimately leads her, in joy and sorrow, across the borders of her homeland, the whole world now her home. Street Girl is a vision of youth to come in the '70s and '80s, expressing a raw anger at the world of adults, school, authority, and society. "A novel that provides a non-stop read since it is compelling to say the least. We are mirrored in this '60s generation, which went into ecstasies at the first strains of rock and became flustered by kisses exchanged at dance parties. No regret shows through in this novel; on the contrary, there's a certain sense of triumph. Muriel Cerf is happy to have been among those in whom was germinating May 1968 and life 'on the road.' Since her memories are not bitter, they foster desires rather than regrets. And for once a teenage discovers her sexuality (in particular her period) without dread, but with curiosity and satisfaction, differing by far from other guilt-ridden stories." (Le Magazine du maisis) "The author drinks in life through all her pores: everything that can be breathed in, seen, touched, tasted finds an echo within her, the slightest fact triggers a whole series of sensations and evocations which shoot from her pen like a spray of sparks. . . . It is Proust revised by a cultured school kid, unconventional, with a solid sense of humor and an unbridled imagination." (Bibliotheque pour tous) "Memories of childhood, of adolescence like so many others, but memories transmuted by Muriel Cerf's writing, her style, her vocabulary. . . . A cascade of words, a torrent of images, accurate and funny, a cataract of expressions, a deluge of evocations." (Le Magazine litteraire) "[Street Girl is] told by Muriel Cerf with a bold and ravishing virtuosity . . . a verve, an intelligence, a style and a tone which already give her a mark of individuality." (Elle)