It is so hard to express what is different line-for-line in this new translation of Colette's classic, but if you could experience the cleaning of a voice, like that of a painting, that might be it. I was left with a new sense of Colette's self-possession as a writer, all while witnessing, moment for moment, Rachel Careau's triumph of style.--Alexander Chee, author of The Queen of the Night In this new translation of Colette's two most celebrated novels we seem to be reading her in English for the first time--her prose lean, limpid, and knowingly askew.--Richard Sieburth, professor emeritus of French literature, thought and culture and comparative literature at New York University Rachel Careau's new translations of Chéri and The End of Chéri capture the bone-on-bone feeling of Colette's prose, sinuous but never florid, precise but generous. Anglophone readers will finally be able to appreciate why Colette is one of the twentieth century's major writers, and worth so much more than her mythology--or, better yet, they will see why the mythology exists. Chéri and The End of Chéri are edgy and surprising, and knowing, piercing insights into love, desire, and all the mysteries.--Lauren Elkin, author of Fl'neuse and translator of Simone de Beauvoir's The Inseparables This is an admirably accurate new translation of two of Colette's most distinctive and moving novels. With a foreword and introduction that capture Colette's brilliant particularity of style and her unsentimental yet affirmative vision of the world, the translation sensitively renders the unique tone and philosophy of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers--Diana Holmes, author of Colette and professor of French, University of Leeds.