Gabriele [9798889661924]

Overview

A May 2025 Indie Next List Great Read 

“Gabriële is a revealing, heartrending biographical novel about a complicated woman whose imprint on art history is undeniable.”—Foreword Reviews 

What if revolutions in art and society began with a revolution in love? 

Written by Anne Berest (The Postcard) and her sister, Claire Berest, Gabriële is a bold, immersive “true novel” about desire, creativity, and the radical reimagining of how to live. 

Paris, 1908. At the height of the Belle Époque, Gabriële Buffet—a brilliant young musician fresh out of Europe’s most elite conservatory—meets Francis Picabia, a charismatic and explosive Spanish painter. Their intense love affair plunges them into a Paris alive with artistic experimentation and social rebellion. Soon after, Gabriële meets Marcel Duchamp—younger than Picabia and Gabriële, brilliant, and enigmatic—and before long the three have embarked on a passionate and unconventional relationship that will define their personal stories—and in the process reshape modern art. 

As Europe moves from exuberance to upheaval, and World War I looms, Gabriële, Francis Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp and their milieu challenge every convention: about marriage, sexuality, authorship, and artistic freedom. Moving between Paris, New York, Zurich, Berlin, Barcelona, London, and Saint-Tropez, the novel asks a question that feels urgently contemporary: can new ways of loving and being in the world create new ways of thinking? 

At once intimate and sweeping, Gabriële restores a pioneering woman to the center of a story long told through men, inviting readers to reconsider genius, collaboration, and the invisible labor behind cultural revolutions.