Cheri and its sequel, The End of Cheri, mark Colette's finest achievements in their brilliant, subtle, and frank investigations of love and power. Set in the Parisian demimonde in the last days of the Belle Epoque, Cheri tells the story of Lea, a courtesan at the end of a successful career, and her lover, the beautiful but emotionally opaque Cheri. Cheri will soon enter into an arranged marriage, ending their six-year affair, which-they will each realize too late-has been the one real love of their lives.

The End of Cheri picks up their story in the aftermath of the First World War. Cheri, now a decorated soldier, has returned from the trenches to a changed world. Emotionally estranged from his independent and unfaithful wife, a psychically wounded Cheri begins an inexorable descent-one that leads him back to a stunning encounter with Lea.

As the acclaimed writer and translator Lydia Davis puts it in an illuminating foreword, Rachel Careau's "brilliantly ingenious, close new translation" reveals Cheri and The End of Cheri as "the strangest of love stories." Colette skillfully portrays her characters' shifting inner lives and desires amid a clear-eyed depiction of interpersonal power dynamics. Careau's lean, attentive translation restores to these classic novels their taut, remarkably modern style-the essence of Colette's genius.