The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping, and the Novel

Alain de Botton

Macmillan, May 15, 1996 - Fiction - 336 pages

In The Romantic Movement, Alain de Botton explores the progress of a love affair from first meeting to breaking up, intercut with musings on the nature of art of love. The relationship between Alice, an advertising executive, and Eric, a banker, is examined at every stage, supplemented by quizzes and line drawings by the author and commentary by a chorus of great philosophers, from Descartes to Plato to Aretha Franklin. The Romantic Movement will charm readers and lovers alike with wit, insight, and intelligence.

About the author

Born in Zurich, Switzerland on December 20, 1969, Alain de Botton was educated at Cambridge University, England, and now divides his time between London and Washington, D.C. With the publication of his first novel, Essays in Love, de Botton quickly became one of the most talked about British novelists of the 1990s. Although the basic plot of Essays in Love (published in the U.S. as On Love) is a rather typical love story, de Botton presents it in a unique and humorous way. De Botton's other novels include The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping and the Novel, which is written in a similar style to Essays on Love, and Kiss and Tell, which follows a would-be biographer as he attempts to write the life story of the first person he encounters. The Course of Love is his latest novel and is on the bestsellers list. Alain de Botton is also the author of How Proust Can Change Your Life: Not a Novel.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Romantic Movement: Sex, Shopping, and the Novel
• Author: Alain de Botton
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Macmillan, 1996
• ISBN: 0312144032, 9780312144036
• Length: 336 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / General; Fiction / Literary