Virtue and Rosalind

A novel that is incredibly rich, yet imbued with lightness; its movement not linear, but impressionistic. A pleasure to read, and later, to think about – Amina Cain, author of My New Face
Virtue and Rosalind is enthralling in the leaps it takes through fashion, friendships, and literary forebears. At once bewildering and intimate, this is a book that feels like a treasured friend. I cannot stop thinking about it – Charlotte Shevchenko Knight, author of Food for The Dead
Betting on the Nobel Prize is a risky errand, but Serre feels like an increasingly decent bet … She does more in 100 words than most writers do in 10,000. This tale of a woman’s love of art and life marks another success – Best Books for 2026 * The Telegraph *
This book is like an enchanted castle. Speaking of her craft, Jane Austen said she worked on little pieces of ivory with a brush of extreme finesse. Anne Serre must have found that magic brush again at a flea market * Le Canard enchaîné *
With Serre, there is neither autofiction, nor autobiography, nor confession, nor historical novel, only fiction – pure fiction – and fantasy, in the manner of Franz Kafka or Robert Walser, whom she counts among her masters * Le Figaro littéraire *
A tribute to friendship, a stroll among beloved authors, and a poetic work of art in itself – sustained by an irony and wit that never let up * Le Temps *
Anne Serre observes life with intelligence and ingenuity, turning everyday facts into a source of delight, often bound up with the unexpected turns in her stories. Her writing is deeply controlled, and her surprising endings give enormous meaning to the whole * France Culture *
It is very rare for lightness to be a literary merit, for it not to rhyme with superficiality. But if we understand the word as Walter Benjamin does when he speaks of the heartbreaking, unshakable, inhuman ‘superficiality’ of Robert Walser’s characters returned from madness, we may come closer to the secret of Anne Serre’s writing. Her playful practice of literature is an art of detachment * Le Monde des livres *
Anne Serre is a great writer, and this text is one of her finest * ELLE *
Strangely unsettling and spellbinding * Livres Hebdo *

Anne Serre (b. 1960) is the author of eighteen works of fiction and a collection of notebooks. Her first novel, The Governesses, was published in 1992. Among her distinctions are a 2008 Cino del Duca Foundation award and the 2020 Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle for her short-story collection Au coeur d’un ete tout en or. In 2025, A Leopard-Skin Hat was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. Virtue and Rosalind, which was nominated for the Prix Medicis among many other prizes, is the fifth of her books to be published in English. Her work regularly appears in publications like Granta and The Paris Review.

Mark Hutchinson was born in London in 1957 and lives in Paris. Among his many translations from the French are Rene Char’s Hypnos: Notes from the French Resistance and The Inventors and Other Poems, and Emmanuel Hocquard’s The Library at Trieste and The Gardens of Sallust.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.