The Only Son
ABOUT
THE BOOK
Instructed at an early age in the philosophy of libertinage by a decadent aristocrat and later apprenticed to a clock maker, François is ultimately disowned by his family and flees to Paris’s underworld. There he finds work in a brothel that caters to politicians and clergy and begins his personal study of the varieties of sexual desire—to its most arcane proclivities. Audeguy uses the libertine’s progress to explore the interplay between the individual and society, much in the tradition of Jean-Jacques, but with a very different emphasis. Bold, erotic, and historically fascinating, The Only Son is, in many ways, the anti-Confessions—François’ own, decidedly different, portrait of human nature.
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR John
Cullen
John Cullen in the translator of more than twenty books from the French, Italian, German, and Spanish. His translations of Margaret Mazzantini’s Don’t Move (from the Italian) and Yasmina Khadra’s The Swallows of Kabul (from the French) were short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Cullen is the also the co-author with Alexandra de Borchgrave of Villard: The Life and Times of an American Titan. Originally from New Orleans, he lives in Connecticut with the writer Valerie Martin.
John Cullen in the translator of more than twenty books from the French, Italian, German, and Spanish. His translations of Margaret Mazzantini’s Don’t Move (from the Italian) and Yasmina Khadra’s The Swallows of Kabul (from the French) were short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Cullen is the also the co-author with Alexandra de Borchgrave of Villard: The Life and Times of an American Titan. Originally from New Orleans, he lives in Connecticut with the writer Valerie Martin.