4 h 19 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 4 h 19 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if the changing seasons could tell you everything about a heart in love?
In Twilight Tales, Armand Silvestre explores love from its first spark to its hopes and fading. These French short stories dwell on desire, the beauty of women, and the sadness that gathers around passing happiness. Dark-haired women and tender longing give the collection its particular charm.
Silvestre brings a poet’s ear to prose, shaping sentences through rhythm and image. Spring suggests hope and new desire; summer brings fullness; autumn and winter turn toward memory and loss. The pleasure lies in watching the world take on the colors of the heart, with beauty and melancholy close together.
What you’ll discover
- Love in its seasons Follow the movement from fresh desire to the quieter feelings of memory and loss.
- Prose with a poet’s rhythm Savor graceful sentences whose music and images bring these tales close to song.
- Beauty touched by sadness Discover stories where the charm of beauty carries an awareness that it cannot last.
- Weather that echoes feeling See spring hope and autumn longing reflect the changing state of a person’s heart.
- A tender, lingering mood Spend a quiet sitting with short tales shaped by love, desire, and gentle melancholy.
Who will love it
You will love this book if you enjoy French poetry, flowers and seasons, wistful love letters, and dreamlike comic scenes, in short pieces you can dip into one evening at a time.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Love speaks through the seasons
- Love brings pleasure and pain
- Spring lives beside the beloved
- Flowers hold tenderness and wounds
- Private dreams outweigh public celebrations
- Laughter and sorrow share a leaf
- Love preserves a living corner
- Winter exposes love's uneasy side
- Small things carry a whole love
Formats and delivery
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- On your phone, tablet or computer, once the book texts are online.
- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, once the book texts are online.
- Audiobook
- Read by Lucas Linden, complete. It opens once the recording is online.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 14 minutes, to read today.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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25 languages, side by side
Twilight Tales in 25 languages, side by side, paragraph by paragraph, once the book texts are online: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Twilight Tales
A poet on a horse from Battambang hunts a deer in the Bois de Boulogne and rides down a bridegroom.
Medium level2–5 hours to read2 languages
Learn a language with medium classicsSpanishFrenchGermanItalianJapanesePortugueseEnglishHow we measure levels
Excellent
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In short
A man sits at his window, ready to write a love story, when a dry lilac leaf blows in and fills his morning with thoughts of winter. Elsewhere in the same book, a rosewood ark floats above a drowned Paris, and a rider on a horse from far-off Battambang runs down a bridegroom in the Bois de Boulogne.
Twilight Tales at a glance
- Reading time
- About 2 h 30 min2 h fast, 3 h slow
- Length
- 35,500 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A poet defends dark-haired women against blondes
The book opens before the seasons begin. A short dedication says that love is at once the greatest sadness and the greatest joy. Then comes Hymn to Brunettes, a letter to the writer Catulle Mendès.
Mendès has written a song praising blondes, and the dark-haired women are furious. The poet agrees to be their champion. He admits that fair-haired women gave him his only peaceful pleasures, but his deepest joys and sorrows came from a woman who wears a helmet of shadow.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 2 h 50 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Silvestre, Armand. Twilight Tales. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/twilight-tales.
Silvestre, A. (2026). Twilight tales. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/twilight-tales
Silvestre, Armand. Twilight Tales. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/twilight-tales.
@book{silvestre2026twilight,
author = {Silvestre, Armand},
title = {Twilight Tales},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/twilight-tales}
}
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What is Twilight Tales about?
It is a collection of short prose sketches and poems by Armand Silvestre, arranged by season, in which flowers, weather and dreams become a language for love, memory and melancholy, often addressed to a beloved woman.
Who wrote Twilight Tales and when?
Armand Silvestre wrote the collection, and its dedication bears the date July 1888. He offered it to readers of his earlier Pleines Fantaisies and called it the best and most sincere part of himself.
What is Hymn to Brunettes?
It is the opening piece, a letter to the writer Catulle Mendès in which Silvestre defends dark-haired women against a song praising blondes, mixing teasing humor with verses on hair like night and moonlit skin.
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