First published in France in 2009, this “documentary novel” finds Charles Aznavour speaking with disarming candor about his family’s past and the hard beginnings of his career—told in a distinctly cinematic voice. We follow “little Charles” from a cramped Latin Quarter apartment with his parents and sister Aïda to his first role at the drama school on Rue Cardinal-Lemoine, early stage tours, and—eventually—his tentative steps into chanson, then dismissed as a “secondary” art form.

Cabarets, nightclubs, and harsh reviews (“a non-folk singer” with an “insipid” look and a “terrible” voice) give way to success, fame, and an unbroken string of concerts—none more treasured than his first performance in the USSR in 1963, whose significance he explains here. Aznavour reflects on the lessons of a life in the spotlight and the irony of a self-taught performer who, decades later, became an honorary doctor of three universities. He recalls longing for the Charles Cros Academy prize for twenty years—and ultimately declining it.

The book closes with a frank meditation on contemporary mores, new stars, self-promotion, and, above all, love.