When I Was Old (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Simenon, Georges

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241213134 ISBN 13: 9780241213131

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2016

Synopsis

'For personal reasons, or for reasons I don't know myself, I began feeling old, and I began keeping notebooks. I was nearing the age of sixty'

Georges Simenon's autobiographical notebooks, in which he recorded his observations, experiences, anxieties and 'all the silly ideas that pass through my head', are one of the most candid self-portraits of a writer ever put to paper. Here, as the celebrated author ruthlessly examines his tortuous writing methods, his past, his fame, his intimate relationships and his fears of ageing, the result is an unsparing, often painfully revealing insight into a man trying both to find and to escape himself.

'As revealed in these notebooks, Simenon's is a shrewd, lucid mind ... the balance tips toward the real, the immediate, the mysteries of human complexity above all ... Utterly unpretentious' The New York Times

About this title

Review:

One of the most poignant autobiographies. (New York Time Magazine Leslie Garis)

Fascinating (Sunday Telegraph)

Makes you feel he's chatting to you as he would to a good friend. The Simenon of the statistics (books written, women bedded) recedes into the background and Simenon the man comes to the fore. (Anthony Thuillier Irish Independent)

About the Author:

Georges Simenon was born in Liège, Belgium, in 1903. He is best know in Britain as the author of the Maigret novels and his prolific output of over 400 novels and short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he had lived for the latter part of his life.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0241213134
• ISBN 13: 9780241213131
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464