Madame

Madame tells the story of a self-absorbed Polish teenager as he pursues intellectual maturity – and the woman of his dreams, his French teacher ‘Madame’ – in the communist-dominated Warsaw of the early 1970s. Libera paces his exuberant young hero’s fulminations, fantasies and discoveries beautifully, building a remarkably subtle characterisation of a free mind in a repressive culture. This is one of those rare novels which reminds us why we love books. A consummate literary entertainment.

Reviews of Madame

* Essentially a vision of a life-changing teenage crush, Libera's debut novel … captures the frustrations of grasping for anything of the world from behind the Iron Curtain and of battling or passion of any kind. The Scotsman * Madame is skilfully written and the subtle backdrop of communism is interesting and convincing. The List * This is an old story made fresh with an excellent evocation of a spirit-crushing school system – a microcosm of communist rule under which the layers of life are corrupted by concessions, compromises and deceptions. The Times