Description

Book Synopsis

''For personal reasons, or for reasons I don''t know myself, I began feeling old, and I began keeping notebooks. I was nearing the age of sixty''

Georges Simenon''s autobiographical notebooks, in which he recorded his observations, experiences, anxieties and ''all the silly ideas that pass through my head'', are one of the most candid self-portraits of a writer ever put to paper. Here, as the celebrated author ruthlessly examines his tortuous writing methods, his past, his fame, his intimate relationships and his fears of ageing, the result is an unsparing, often painfully revealing insight into a man trying both to find and to escape himself.

''As revealed in these notebooks, Simenon''s is a shrewd, lucid mind ... the balance tips toward the real, the immediate, the mysteries of human complexity above all ... Utterly unpretentious'' The New York Times



Trade Review
One of the most poignant autobiographies. -- New York Time Magazine * Leslie Garis *
Fascinating * Sunday Telegraph *
Makes you feel he's chatting to you as he would to a good friend. The Simenon of the statistics (books written, women bedded) recedes into the background and Simenon the man comes to the fore. -- Anthony Thuillier * Irish Independent *

When I Was Old

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    £11.07

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    Order before 4pm today for delivery by Fri 26 Jun 2026.

    A Paperback / softback by Georges Simenon

    4 in stock

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      View other formats and editions of When I Was Old by Georges Simenon

      Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
      Publication Date: 04/02/2016
      ISBN13: 9780241213131, 978-0241213131
      ISBN10: 0241213134

      Description

      Book Synopsis

      ''For personal reasons, or for reasons I don''t know myself, I began feeling old, and I began keeping notebooks. I was nearing the age of sixty''

      Georges Simenon''s autobiographical notebooks, in which he recorded his observations, experiences, anxieties and ''all the silly ideas that pass through my head'', are one of the most candid self-portraits of a writer ever put to paper. Here, as the celebrated author ruthlessly examines his tortuous writing methods, his past, his fame, his intimate relationships and his fears of ageing, the result is an unsparing, often painfully revealing insight into a man trying both to find and to escape himself.

      ''As revealed in these notebooks, Simenon''s is a shrewd, lucid mind ... the balance tips toward the real, the immediate, the mysteries of human complexity above all ... Utterly unpretentious'' The New York Times



      Trade Review
      One of the most poignant autobiographies. -- New York Time Magazine * Leslie Garis *
      Fascinating * Sunday Telegraph *
      Makes you feel he's chatting to you as he would to a good friend. The Simenon of the statistics (books written, women bedded) recedes into the background and Simenon the man comes to the fore. -- Anthony Thuillier * Irish Independent *

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