Michel Pastoureau considers how this once venerated creature was deposed by Christianity and continued to sink lower in the symbolic bestiary before rising again in Pyrrhic triumph as the teddy bear.

Dedicated to Duras’ companion with whom she spent her last decade of life, Yann Andréa Steiner is a haunting dance between two parallel stories of love and solitude: the love between Duras and the young Yann Andréa and a seaside romance ...

Here are the humiliations and passions of the poverty-ridden world in which Duras grew up; the intense sexuality and the young girls who were her friends and classmates, a group of adolescents impatient for the experiences of adult life, ...