Description
About the Author
Monique Fleury Nagem is a professor of modern languages at McNeese State University. She is the translator of Chantal Chawaf's Mother Love, Mother Earth and Redemption, as well as of Dominique Rolin's The Garden of Delights.
Reviews
"From the first page, [Mogador] declares her intention to tell the real story of a courtesan's experiences. . . . Celeste's telegraphic, mostly unadorned, literary style supports her claim to authenticity-she was almost entirely uneducated, and at 15 could barely read. But it is the palpable pleasure she takes in seeing people and events clearly, even recognizing her own flaws and those of the people she loves and wishes to think well of, that gives her book the complexity of truth-the kind of complex truth we often look for in modern fiction."-New York Times Book Review
"Mogador (born Celeste Venard in 1824) was the queen of the Bal Mabille and gained her fame in Parisian dance halls and as an equestrienne, a daring circus rider, at the Hippodrome. Her life, exemplary of bohemian Paris in the 1840s and 1850s, bridges the periods of the Second Republic and the Third Empire. . . . [Mogador's memoirs] contribute to our understanding of how desire was presented and consumed in 19th-century Paris. . . . Refreshing details of daily life are everywhere in these pages, as [Mogador] tells us what was in a bouquet and what she and others wore. She recounts the feints, slights, and homage experienced at a ball, the fevers of the gambling tables, the drama of a boar hunt in the countryside on a nobleman's estate. . . . The settings of social life, high and low, in 19th-century Paris are etched in many memorable passages."-Los Angeles Times
Book Information
ISBN 9780803282735
Author Celeste Mogador
Format Paperback
Page Count 325
Imprint Bison Books
Publisher University of Nebraska Press
Weight(grams) 454g