The Artist
Provence, 1920: a reclusive painter, a hungry young journalist, and the niece who guards the house's secrets.
Acheter : Amazon · Place des libraires · Fnac
Présentation
Provence, the 1920s. Joseph, an aspiring British journalist, talks his way into the isolated farmhouse of Tartuffe, a famously reclusive painter, hoping the interview will make his name. Inside the sun-baked walls he finds the artist's niece, Ettie — watchful, indispensable, and keeper of more secrets than the household lets on. Lucy Steeds's debut won the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and Book of the Year 2025, was longlisted for the Women's Prize, and is Waterstones' Fiction Book of the Month for June 2026 in its new paperback edition. A slow-burning story of art, hunger and freedom, praised by the Sunday Times for writing that is « rich and sensuous » — food, heat and the act of creation rendered in prose you can almost touch.