Philippe Besson ‘I told Macron he had zero chance of becoming president’
almost 5 years in The guardian
The celebrated novelist on his friendship with France’s first couple and his latest book, a French Brokeback Mountain. Plus, a Q&A with translator Molly Ringwald
When French writer Philippe Besson was introduced to Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron at a dinner five years ago, it was friendship at first sight. Besson recalls that he and the woman who would become France’s first lady chatted about her favourite literary figure, Emma Bovary.
The choice of Gustave Flaubert’s tragic heroine who is passionate and bored with the banality of provincial life but trapped in a mediocre marriage, was not, Besson thinks, an accident. After all, it is no secret that Brigitte was married with three children and working as a teacher in the provincial northern city of Amiens when she began a relationship with Emmanuel Macron, 24 years her junior. Continue reading...
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