Claire Berest is the author of the novels Mikado (2009), The Empty Orchestra, Bellevue (2016), Rien n’est noir, winner of the ELLE Readers Grand Prize, and two works of nonfiction, Class Struggle: Why I Resigned from National Education, and Lost Children: An Investigation in the Minors Brigade. Her most recent novel is Artifices.
France
Claire Berest
All Claire Berest's books
Upcoming events
Learn more about the extraordinary Gabriële Buffet, Anne Berest’s great-grandmother and the subject of her new novel, Gabriële, written with her sister Claire.
November 9-16
Join Anne Berest as she returns to the U.S. to discuss her best-selling novel The Postcard and introduce Gabriële, her highly anticipated new novel coming April 2025.
April 23-30
Join the best-selling author of The Postcard, Anne Berest, and her sister, novelist Claire Berest, on tour for their highly anticipated new novel, Gabriële.
Latest reviews
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“A masterful portrait of a boldly intelligent but also determinedly self-erasing woman.”— Historical Novels Review, May 6 2025![]()
“Anne and Claire Berest wrote Gabriële to better understand their great-grandmother, wife and muse of the French painter Francis Picabia.”— The Washington Post, Apr 25 2025![]()
“The drama of Gabriële is less the life-and-death drama that drives The Postcard than the drama of biography, of how an unconventional life unfolds, and the drama of thought, specifically the ideas that change prevailing notions about mimetic art.”
— Frenchly, Apr 22 2025![]()
Like Gabriële herself, this book takes on big ideas about modern art and modern life—without losing sight of the people caught and crushed in those turning gears.
— The New York Times Book Review, Apr 22 2025![]()
“The most engaging part of Gabriële is the Berests’ prose: early on, the authors note that they will be telling the story in the present tense, to capture the feeling and energy of their great-grandmother. The result is a historical novel unlike any other.”— BookPage, Apr 21 2025![]()
“A loving tribute to an important figure of the avant garde art movement who was nearly forgotten to history.”— TIME Magazine, Apr 1 2025![]()
“Readers interested in WWI-era historical fiction, art history, and genealogy will be most floored by the Berest sisters’ efforts... From a storied yet painful chapter in their ancestral history, they’ve created their own dizzyingly detailed art.”— Booklist, Mar 28 2025![]()
“Gabriële fictionally reconstructs the life of Gabriële Buffet-Picabia, a ‘visionary art theorist’ who, as the wife of Francis Picabia and mistress of Marcel Duchamp, was embedded, literally, in the heart of the European modernist avant-garde.”— The Globe & Mail, Mar 18 2025![]()
“A revealing, heartrending biographical novel about a complicated woman whose imprint on art history is undeniable.”— Foreword Reviews, Mar 1 2025![]()
“A remarkable champion of the avant-garde, unremembered by history, is rescued from obscurity by her great-granddaughters, a pair of writing sisters... An atmospheric excavation of an unusual woman and marriage, both intriguing and remote.”— Kirkus Reviews, Feb 1 2025![]()
“If you loved Anne Berest’s The Postcard you absolutely must read this furtherance of her most remarkable family’s story... This is an even more astounding, fascinating and enlightening account of a clan like no other.”
— Reading the West, Jan 29 2025![]()
“The Berest sisters follow up Anne’s The Postcard with a colorful portrait of their great-grandmother Gabriële Buffet-Picabia. With lyrical prose, the Berests blend historical context with more intimate insights.”— Publishers Weekly, Jan 24 2025
France
