Colombe Schneck

From the award-winning and best-selling French author, a woman personal journey through abortion, sex, friendship, love and swimming At fifty years old, while taking swimming lessons, I finally realized that my body was not actually as incompetent as I’d thought. My physical gestures had been, until then, small, worried, tense. In swimming I learned to extend them, to build up my strength and use it in the right doses. My body, by showing me who I was, allowed me to become fully myself. In “Seventeen,” “Friendship,” and “Swimming,” Colombe Schneck orchestrates a coming-of-age in three movements. Beautiful, masterfully controlled, yet filled with pathos, they invite the reader into a decades-long evolution of sexuality, bodily autonomy, friendship, and loss. Schneck’s prose maintains an unwavering intimacy, whether conjuring a teenage abortion in the midst of a privileged Parisian upbringing or the nuance of a long friendship or a mid-life romance. Swimming in Paris is an immersive, propulsive triptych—fundamentally human in its tender concern for every messy and glorious reality of the body, and deeply wise in its understanding of both desire and of letting go.

'This is valuable writing. It has immense vitality. You will encounter a female narrator whose direct and bright-eyed stare at the world, and her self, is without shame or faux modesty. At the same time, it is also a deep study of existence, at various ages and stages in life.' — Deborah Levy ' Swimming is a dreamy, bruised, and carnal book that pretty much no American would write and pretty much every American will thrill to read. Schneck’s “discovery of her body, at the age of fifty” is our encounter with an entrancing mind.' — Lauren Collins From celebrated author Colombe Schneck, in her first translation into English , The Paris Trilogy is three semi-autobiographical takes on a woman’s life, starting with Seventeen , progressing with Friendship , and then A Love Story. Exploring questions of sexuality, bodily autonomy, femininity, friendship and loss, The Paris Trilogy is a moving meditation on a lifelong journey to reclaim the female body, accepting it for all its faults and learning to celebrate its strength. The Paris Trilogy is translated into English by award-winning translators Natasha Lehrer and Lauren Elkin.