Guardian Opinion: France, literature and the age of consent

New year, new scandal.

Over the last few weeks, the Parisian literary elite has been contorting itself into elaborate knots over the behaviour of Gabriel Matzneff,  the 83-year-old prizewinning novelist, essayist and predator. In Le Consentement, an explosive new memoir, Vanessa Springora describes her relationship with Matzneff, which began in the mid-1980s, when she was 14 and he in his 50s.

My article in the Guardian about Gabriel Matzneff