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New York Times Best Historical Fiction of 2025

A May 2025 Indie Next List Great Read

“Like Gabrile herself, this book takes on big ideas about modern art and modern life.”–The New York Times

The story of a passionate love affair that triggered a revolution.

An atmospheric, exuberant novel from the best-selling author of The Postcard, Anne Berest, and her sister, Claire Berest, about love and sex, art and revolution, experimentation and creativity, and three young people who changed the world.

The year is 1908, the height of the Belle poque, and a brilliant, young French woman named Gabrile, newly graduated from the most elite music school in Europe, meets a volcanic Spanish artist named Francis. Following a whirlwind romance, they marry and fall headlong into a Paris that is experimenting with new forms of living, thinking, and creating. Soon after marrying Francis, Gabrile meets Marcel, another young artist, five years her junior. Soon, Francis, Marcel, and Gabrile are all involved in a fervent affair that will change the course of art history and redefine the avant-garde.

As the Belle Epoque gives way to rebellion and revolution, and the world descends into the devastation of World War I, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Gabrile Buffet revolutionize art and open up new ways of seeing and thinking, along the way posing a vital question for their age and ours: what is the connection between new ways loving and new ways of creating?

Moving between Paris, New York, Berlin, Zurich, Barcelona, London, and Saint-Tropez, Gabrile is as audacious, uninhibited, intimate, and unforgettable as its central character, the mercurial, pioneering Gabrile Buffet.