Memoirs from Beyond the Grave

Written over the course of four decades, Francois-ReneL de Chateaubriands epicautobiography has drawn the admiration of Baudelaire, Flaubert, Proust, RolandBarthes, Paul Auster, and W. G. Sebald. In this unabridged section of the Memoirs,spanning the years 1768 to 1800, Chateaubriand looks back on the already bygoneworld of his youth. He recounts the history of his aristocratic family and the firstrumblings of the French Revolution. He recalls playing games on the beachesof Saint-Malo, wandering in the woods near his fathers castle in Combourg,hunting with King Louis XVI at Versailles, witnessing the first heads carried onpikes through the streets of Paris, meeting with George Washington in Philadelphia,and falling hopelessly in love with a young woman named Charlotte in the smallSuffolk town of Bungay. The volume ends with Chateaubriands return to Franceafter eight years of exile in England. In this new edition (the first unabridged translation of any portion of the Memoirsto be published in more than a century), Chateaubriand emerges as a writer ofgreat wit and clarity, a self-deprecating egoist whose meditations on the meaningof history, memory, and morality are leavened with a mixture of high whimsy andmemorable gloom.

Additional ISBNs: 9781681371290, 1681371294, 9781681371306, 1681371308