Lorenza Foschini Ordre des livres (chronologique)

Set in Naples in 1959, the story revolves around Renato Caccioppoli, a brilliant mathematician and pianist with a rich cultural background and a lineage linked to anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. His life, marked by intellectual prowess and storytelling charm, ends tragically when he takes his own life in his home. The narrative explores themes of genius, despair, and the complexities of identity, providing a poignant glimpse into the mind of a man who struggled with profound personal demons.

The story of the overcoat begins with a chance meeting - between an obsessive bibliophile, Jacques Guerin, the head of a French perfume house, and his physician, Dr Robert Proust, brother of the late writer. Glimpsing the possibility of adding to his collection, Guerin stumbles into a tense and tangled relationship with the novelist's family who, embarrassed by Proust's writings and his homosexuality, are in the process of destroying the mountain of notebooks, letters and manuscripts they had inherited. Little by little, over decades, Guerin acquires Marcel's remaining personal effects, including - eventually - the relic he had come to covet more than any other: the moth-eaten otter-lined overcoat Proust had worn every day and used as a blanket every night while writing in bed. Like the novelist's second skin, this coat was as close as Guerin could ever come to touching Proust himself: it was the jewel of his collection.