This article comes from Figaro magazine
From Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, permanent secretary of the French Academy for twenty-three years, we believed – wrongly – to know everything.
Her childhood as a Russian exile, living as a group of 4 in a 24 m2 apartment;
her immediate passion for the French language thanks to La Fontaine, read at age 4, Victor Hugo, her own Homer, and Voltaire, whose cheerfulness and irony she venerated;
the tragic death of his father in 1944, undoubtedly executed by the Resistance;
his major works on Soviet Russia, annoying both communists (by his implicit denunciation of the system) and anti-communists (by his refusal to participate in any crusade);
bookstore successes;
entry into the French Academy, which she would then direct with a resolute authority which earned her the nickname Tsarina (but wasn't that a compliment for this admirer of Catherine II?).
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