Manon Lescaut

About the book

The Chevalier des Grieux tells an older listener how his attachment to Manon redirected the future expected of him. Their wish to remain together repeatedly encounters questions of money, family authority, social position, and Manon's attraction to comfort. Prévost allows the lover's intensity to govern the account without making that intensity a reliable guide to every motive. Des Grieux can describe his conduct as irresistible devotion while revealing the decisions and evasions through which it develops. The frame invites sympathy and also leaves room to question a story told in justification of its teller. As the lovers move through precarious arrangements, the novel makes the practical cost of sustaining desire inseparable from the difficulty of understanding another person through the language of one's own need.

• Desire
• Money and dependence
• Self-justification

Why read it

For a passionate first-person account that leaves readers to judge the difference between devotion and an explanation designed to excuse it.

English translation