A Little Sun in Cold Water. The Stray

Françoise Sagan is a strange star of French literature, an invariably contemporary classic outside any modernity. She wrote her stories about love in a void where there are no events in the world, but there is always pleasant leisure, under the influence of existentialism from Jean-Paul Sartre. Her stories are clearly inspired by Maupassant. In part, she is a literary sister of Salinger, a creative ancestor of Sally Rooney: the microscopic movements of the soul have always interested both her and her characters much more than any external events and personal actions. And yet, in real life, Sagan had her share of scandals in society chronicles, gambling, passionate love, and a very substantial reality — for example, the Paris events of 1968. She lived as she saw fit in a world where a woman was still assigned the boring, narrow, subordinate role of a "decoration," and all her heroines subtly or openly rebel against such casting: by pretentiously playing by the rules, sometimes getting overly caught up, and even beginning to sincerely believe in their own game, they undermine the imposed laws simply by being very aware of them.
This collection includes "A Little Sun in Cold Water" — one of Sagan's most acclaimed novels, a chronicle of tragic love and unavoidable betrayal, and "The Stray," a story about the unexpected adventures of an unnoticed man, mired in routine, whose life and self-perception are turned upside down when he accidentally finds a treasure — and not just one.