The number one bestseller in France and Italy, by Françoise Héritier, The Sweetness of Life is a beautiful and poetic reference to the everyday reasons that make life worth living. Assuming an average life expectancy of 85 years, and deducting the hours spent daily on sleep, shopping, eating, working, nurturing relationships, and fulfilling obligations, how much time remains for the average person to enjoy the activities that constitute the sweetness of life? For Françoise Héritier, these activities, these moments, comprise the true human experience. These are the moments we all cherish: wild laughter, coffee in the sun, the happiness of fresh autumn evenings, walks in the warm rain, long conversations in the twilight, kisses on the neck, the moment nature falls silent, times when you know someone loves you, looks at you, and listens to you, cooking a complex dish, the feeling of well-being, meeting friends you haven't seen in a while, watching a craftsman at work, listening to others. "There are still so many that I forget," says Héritier, and she continues to enumerate, with touching and tender precision, all that we lose if we do not pay attention to the lightness and grace of simple existence, the sweetness of life. What would you lose if all these things had to disappear from your life forever?

A series of perceptions, sensations, currents, and happiness that offer real intensity to existence ... a truly wonderful marvel.

Françoise Héritier, an anthropologist, is an Emeritus Professor at the Collège de France and the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. She has authored highly successful works such as Masculin/féminin and De la violence, which have been translated into more than ten languages. Le Sel de la Vie (translated into English as The Sweetness of Life) is a French bestseller.