> Skip to content
[]
  • Published: 8 September 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241574706
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $24.99

Cheri




Colette's celebrated and provocative novella of forbidden love, freshly translated in Penguin Classics

Chéri: spoiled, petulant, beautiful, aged twenty-five. Léa: magnificent, brilliant, remorseless, aged forty-nine. They are in love, but their relationship exists beyond the bounds of social acceptability and must one day come to an end, no matter the cost.

A succès de scandale on publication for its depiction of transgressive love, Colette’s celebrated novella is also a profound and compelling exploration of the passage of time, the body and ageing, mirrors, self-perception, self-knowledge and the tragedy of mortality.

  • Published: 8 September 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241574706
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 128
  • RRP: $24.99

Also by Colette

See all

Praise for Cheri

One of the country’s most significant writers on sexual freedom … Since her death women’s personal narratives about sex have become a hallmark of French literature

Nelly Kaprièlian-Self, TLS

A mistress of metaphor and sparking detail, with more punch than Proust

James Hopkin, The Guardian