Vers la beauté

Antoine Duris, a respected professor of art history in Lyon, abruptly abandons his career and moves to Paris, where he takes a modest job as a room guard at the Musée d'Orsay. To the museum's human resources director, it makes no sense: why would a Modigliani specialist, so obviously overqualified, seek such a quiet, anonymous post? What is he running from?

In a second strand that unfolds gradually, the novel tells the story of Camille, a shy and gifted young woman who discovers a consuming passion for painting — and whose life is bound to Antoine's by a hidden sorrow. As the two narratives draw closer, the drama linking them slowly takes shape.

David Foenkinos's tender, understated novel is a meditation on beauty as refuge — the way art can hold us together when everything else falls apart.