Spine of dust jacket a little faded and one corner bumped, otherwise a near fine copy, inscribed opposite the title page “For David, the most respectable man on earth, and faithful Jane, with my love, Yvette, Mai 1993.”
Cornwell and Pierpaoli became friends (“David’s relationship with Yvette Pierpaoli was unusual in that it began as an affair and became a loving friendship” - Sisman, Secret Life) in Phnom Penh in the mid 1970s, and she acted as one his guides in Cambodia. She was a remarkable woman, and was the inspiration for the fearless Tessa in The Constant Gardener. The significance of her actual death (on a hillside in Albania) while he was writing the death of her fictional equivalent was explored in an essay he wrote for The Observer in 2001, effectively an obituary for Yvette but which also stands as something of a key to his writing. His description of Yvette herself is moving:
“She was a small, sparky, tough, brown-eyed provincial Frenchwoman in her late thirties, by turns vulnerable and raucous, and enormously empathetic. She had all the wiles. She could spread her elbows and upbraid you like a bargee. She could tip you a smile to melt your heart, cajole, flatter, and win you in any way you needed to be won.
But it was all for a cause. And the cause, you quickly learned, was an absolutely non-negotiable, visceral requirement in her to get food and money to the starving, medicines to the sick, shelter for the homeless, paper for the stateless, and, just generally, in the most secular, muscular, businesslike, down-to-earth way you could imagine, perform miracles. This did not in any way prevent her from being a resourceful and frequently shameless businesswoman, particularly when she was pitched against people whose cash, in her unshakable opinion, would be better in the pockets of the needy.“
This memoir, written in French, had no English-language edition - Cornwell was of course completely comfortable in the German language.
From the library of David Cornwell aka John Le Carré.
Maggs Bros. Ltd., Catalogue 1526, John Le Carré: Books from The Library of Jane and David Cornwell at Tregiffian, Item 226
