Act of Passion

by Georges Simenon

Published 1 March 1965
     For forty years Charles Alavoine has sleepwalked through his life. Growing up as a good boy in the grip of a domineering mother, he trains as a doctor, marries, opens a medical practice in a quiet country town, and settles into an existence of impeccable bourgeois conformity. And yet at unguarded moments this model family man is haunted by a sense of emptiness and futility.
     Then, one night, laden with Christmas presents, he meets Martine. It is time for the sleeper to awake.

Pedigree

by Georges Simenon

Published 20 July 2010


Monsieur Monde Vanishes

by Georges Simenon

Published 1 January 1977
Wealthy, respectable and apparently content, Monsieur Monde is a pillar of the Parisian bourgeoisie. One day he simply vanishes, leaving his spoilt children and cold wife for Marseilles. In an underworld of drug-takers and dance hostesses, Monde finally realizes his lifelong ambition: to be a man in the street, unrespectable, anonymous, alone.

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan

by Georges Simenon

Published 31 October 2003

'One of his most erotic and emotionally charged stories' The Times

Two people who didn't know each other and who had come together by a miracle in the great city, and who now clung desperately to each other, as if already they felt a chilly solitude settling in.

A divorced actor and a lonely woman, both adrift in New York, meet by chance in an all-night diner. It is the start of something, though neither is sure what. As they move through neon-lit streets, bars, rented rooms and cheap motels, these two lost souls struggle to understand what it is that has brought them, in spite of themselves, inexorably together.

'Simenon casts his characteristic spell from the opening lines. There is an evanescent, hallucinatory, almost dreamlike quality throughout' Daily Telegraph

'Three Bedrooms in Manhattan is about how we resist love, how we get dragged into it, spat out, dragged back in against our will' Los Angeles Times


Tropic Moon

by Georges Simenon

Published 1 September 2009

Widow

by Georges Simenon

Published 25 March 2008

Dirty Snow

by Georges Simenon

Published 1 September 2003