Camille

She is the most desirable woman in Paris, and she is dying. Marguerite Gautier, the celebrated courtesan known as the Lady of the Camellias, burns through life with ferocious appetite: champagne, lovers, the adulation of every salon in the city. Yet beneath the diamonds and the admirers, tuberculosis is hollowing her from within. When young Armand Duval encounters her at the theater, he sees only beauty. What follows is a love story that knows from its first breath it can only end in grief. Based on Dumas fils's own liaison with the real Marie Duplessis, Camille scandalized 1848 France with its portrait of a prostitute as a noble, self-sacrificing heroine. When Armand's father comes pleading for his son's future, Marguerite makes the sacrifice that will destroy them both. This is the novel that inspired Verdi's La Traviata, yet the original burns with a raw honesty the opera could never quite match. It is a story about what we owe to those we love, and the terrible cost of being loved too much.