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This feast of a novel sweeps readers from the Greek War of Independence through the Paris of the Romantics to America, across all the turbulence of the mid-19th century, trailing headlong the adventures of two Serbian brothers: Miloš the warrior and Srdjan the poet.

Attend the opening night of Victor Hugo’s Hernani, with its brawls between Classicists and Romantics. See Srdjan seduce Delphine Gay, who pines for her ex-lover Alfred de Vigny, flirt with Adèle during dinner at the Hugos, and pursue Aurore Dudevant, who prefers to be called “George” — Sand, of course. Watch the brothers’ beautiful cousin Milena bed Balzac, the eccentric collector of knick-knacks, and save the child Gavroche from the menacing inspector Vidocq. See Milos wind up in the New World as the sheriff of a small town in Maine. Besson’s cavalcade of historical notables includes the real, the imagined, and the larger than life, who have since become legend. His vision of history is at once playful and cynical, his style at once gossipy and ironic, with the speed and lightness of Stendhal and the chivalry and enthusiasm of Dumas.

A portrait of society sparkling with deceit, in which every line of dialogue is an enticement or a riposte, Les Frères de la Consolation pulls readers on a breathless dash to the last page, through a world dizzy with vice and glory, whose only grace is transience. Originally published in 1998, this Goncourt-nominated novel, which shares its title with a volume of Balzac’s massive Comédie Humaine, was recently selected for Grasset’s "Cahiers Rouges", a collection of contemporary and historical classics.