There are books that travel from reader to reader, and libraries that are inherited, which conceal their share of mystery. In a box of old books that came from his great-uncle, who was a bookseller, a man discovers a notebook. It has a thick cardboard cover, reinforced with a dark cloth, and no title. Inside, written in a woman’s hand, there is a copy of Paul Claudel’s Partage de midi, dated 1942 and signed with the initials M.S. By that date, the play had not yet been published, with only a few copies circulating among the author’s friends and family; Partage de midi was, so to speak, a forbidden work.
This is the beginning of a quest for the enigmatic M.S. that obsesses the protagonist. A first autobiographical novel born from the discovery of a very real notebook, La Copiste takes us on an intimate and imaginary journey through the twentieth century’s political, literary and artistic history.
