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by Anne Berest (Author), Claire Berest (Author), Tina Kover (Translator)
A May 2025 Indie Next List Great Read
"Gabriële is a revealing, heartrending biographical novel about a complicated woman whose imprint on art history is undeniable."--Foreword Reviews
What if revolutions in art and society began with a revolution in love?
Written by Anne Berest (The Postcard) and her sister, Claire Berest, Gabriële is a bold, immersive "true novel" about desire, creativity, and the radical reimagining of how to live.
Paris, 1908. At the height of the Belle Époque, Gabriële Buffet--a brilliant young musician fresh out of Europe's most elite conservatory--meets Francis Picabia, a charismatic and explosive Spanish painter. Their intense love affair plunges them into a Paris alive with artistic experimentation and social rebellion. Soon after, Gabriële meets Marcel Duchamp--younger than Picabia and Gabriële, brilliant, and enigmatic--and before long the three have embarked on a passionate and unconventional relationship that will define their personal stories--and in the process reshape modern art.
As Europe moves from exuberance to upheaval, and World War I looms, Gabriële, Francis Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp and their milieu challenge every convention: about marriage, sexuality, authorship, and artistic freedom. Moving between Paris, New York, Zurich, Berlin, Barcelona, London, and Saint-Tropez, the novel asks a question that feels urgently contemporary: can new ways of loving and being in the world create new ways of thinking?
At once intimate and sweeping, Gabriële restores a pioneering woman to the center of a story long told through men, inviting readers to reconsider genius, collaboration, and the invisible labor behind cultural revolutions.
