Francoise Sagan novel unveiled in France

A mystery book that has been a source of rumour and speculation over the summer in France has finally been revealed: it is Les Quatre Coins du Cœur (Four Corners of the Heart), a novel by Françoise Sagan, who died 15 years ago and is best known for her book Bonjour Tristesse.

The novel, which goes on sale today (Thursday 19th September), was completed and prefaced by Sagan’s only son Denis Westhoff, and is published by Editions Plon of Editis, France’s second largest publishing group. But the title has a print run of only 80,000 and not the 250,000 that was widely reported by the French press in July, when rumours of the book began to circulate. The book was flagged only as "X", instead of being named like all the other titles ahead of the rentrée litteraire, a peak publishing period in France that marks the end of the summer holidays and runs from mid-August to the end of October.

Westhoff found the text, which is set in Normandy, among his mother’s papers when he accepted his inheritance and her debts.

After a bleak 2018 for French publishing, the number of novels launched this rentrée shrank by 7.6% from 567 last year to 524, the fewest for 20 years, according to the trade weekly Livres Hebdo. The number of French titles fell by 11.8% to 336, while foreign ones remained stable.