“A portrait of a committed, seasoned artist . . . Arnaud’s biography provides a useful corrective and will inspire renewed interest in Cocteau's work.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)


“Jean Cocteau was the artistic ringmaster of 20th century Paris. Claude Arnaud has written the definitive—and fascinating—life of this artist and impresario, and along the way has clarified mysteries about his sexuality and his collaboration with the Nazis.”—Edmund White


"Arnaud’s incisive and immensely readable biography of the brilliantly witty albeit flawed Cocteau is a triumph. Thank God this essential book has finally been translated. Read it and wallow in twentieth-century art and letters."—John Richardson, author of A Life of Picasso, vols. I–III


“Claude Arnaud’s cornucopian biography give us a marvelous, if in some ways consolingly familiar, portrait of the upper echelons of Parisian aristo artistic circles . . . Simply everybody is here: from Mistinguett to Marcel Proust, Robert de Montesquiou to Anna de Noailles, Misia Sert to Natalie Barney, we wander through an enchanted period when talent seemed to earn immediate rewards, spiced by an undercurrent of discreet homosexuality. . . . Claude Arnaud’s work is welcome for reminding us just how remarkable its subject was. It is also welcome for its argument that the twentieth century has left few artistic survivors.”—Lachlan Mackinnon, Times Literary Supplement