A fleur de chair

"This novel, however erotic and exciting, is much more than that: it is a novel about the couple, a novel about love, a novel about jealousy, a novel about sexuality and female emancipation. Sarah Chiche

Delphine has been Antoine's wife for almost ten years. This middle-class couple from Bordeaux has a smooth existence, except for one detail: Antoine leads a double life in which he gives free rein to his BDSM appetite. Delphine knows this and accepts this arrangement, on the condition that she knows nothing of what goes on there. One day, however, she discovers the trunk hidden by her husband. Inside, instruments, accessories, but also a series of letters. Letters from a submissive, describing their appointments in detail. At first repulsed by the content of this clandestine reading, Delphine ends up being caught up in a dizzying spiral: the need to know, despite her shame and guilt, why this woman accepts each of the "tests" to which Antoine subjects her month after month, in an ever-growing devotion. How far will the sexual surrender of one and the integrity of the other go?
A novel of secret lives, À fleur de chair is an erotic thriller of fever and ecstasy where play reveals the nakedness of the soul. A text that is as much feminine as it is feminist, exploring the possibilities of freedom in submission.

Born in 1981, Chloé Saffy lives in Toulouse. After Adore (Dominique Leroy, 2013) and Soaring Blue (Atlantica, 2018), À fleur de chair is her third novel. She is also the author of Subspace, an autofictional essay on Donna Tartt's Master of Illusions (Le Feu Sacré Éditions, 2020).