Les Menteurs

In 1975 Claire, Karine and Pierre sit side by side in a literary preparatory class in Lyon: Claire with her hennaed hair and flowing skirts, Karine, the aloof "ice queen" who dreams of the catwalk, and Pierre, a languid dandy hiding a future high official's ambitions. Three decades later the old friends, once lovers, reunite in a Paris garden and take turns telling what became of them. Their crisscrossing first-person accounts follow a generation that studied under the structuralists and heard Foucault lecture, campaigned at Berkeley, partied through Madrid's Movida, then landed in an age of money, celebrity and reality television, working in universities, journalism, fashion and politics. Love, AIDS, children, single life and second families all pass through these memories, in which each wonders how much they have lied to themselves.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

333 pages in the original

Genres

Satire (assigned by AI)

Set in

France

First published

2004 by Grasset

Author's age

47 when first published

ISBN

9782246673811 (original)