Timothy Lomeli

Gisèle Pineau. Ady, Black Sun.

Liverpool University Press, forthcoming.

When Man Ray, 44, and Adrienne Fidelin, 19, meet at the Bal Colonial on Rue Blomet in Paris during the roaring twenties an intense love affair is born that will last four years before being brutally ended by the war. Years of complicity and passion will mark the two of them for life.

Gisèle Pineau, through the voice of Ady, brings this suspended period of happiness back to life. Forced to leave her native Guadeloupe at 15 and move to Paris, the young and spontaneous woman soon seduces Man Ray et finds herself wrapped up in the bohemian life the great American artists leads with his friends. Because the moments of sexual freedom and intellect are beyond compare, in Montparnasse, as well as the summers in Mougins with Paul and Nusch Éluard, Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar, Lee Miller and Roland Penrose: naked bodies exposed in the sun or to Man’s camera. Ady, Lee and Nusch indulge in all manners of pleasure. Ady recounts a golden age, a time of innovation and creation, a tumultuous life where the protagonists are titans of art history.

Gisèle Pineau writes the true story of Ady, a stunning muse, Man Ray’s “black sun” – a woman full of grace who Éluard assured had “clouds in her hands”.

Original French: Ady, soleil noir. Philippe Rey, 2021

Translated from the French by Tiffane Levick & T. Lomeli

Release date: 28 April 2025

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Published as a part of the Winthrop-King and Liverpool University Press “World Writing in French: New Archipelagoes” translation series.