"While helping a friend clean out an old apartment in Paris, French diplomat Jean-Yves Berthault discovers a leather attache case hidden under a pile of old jars and papers. The case contained a collection of handwritten letters. Upon reading the first one, Berthault realizes an extraordinary adventure lies at his fingertips. The letters are penned by the mysterious Simone, a well-to-do Parisian woman, and written to her younger, married lover Charles between 1928-1930. What unfolds is the tale of their affair--a chronicle of sexual awakening that grows into obsession. The more desperately Simone desires Charles, the more remote he becomes. As her hunger grows, she pushes him beyond his sexual boundaries in an effort to keep him enthralled. With each broken taboo, Charles submits--until their last fateful encounter. These letters are an epistolary tour de force, written in language that is at once elegant and emotional and shockingly explicit. Simone's letters reveal an all-encompassing appetite for a man who evades her and present a unique psychological and sexual portrait of a passionate, vulnerable, and curiously modern woman that echoes down the century"--Provided by publisher.