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  • Published: 4 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781802060348
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 128

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: 4 June 2026
  • ISBN: 9781802060348
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 128

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Praise for Cheri

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

James Hopkin, The Guardian

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