Camille (la Dame Aux Camilias)

This is the tragic love story that haunted a generation and influenced everything from opera to cinema. Marguerite Gautier, the radiant "Camille," is the most desired courtesan in Paris, a woman who spends her nights in the company of the wealthy and her days nursing the tuberculosis that will eventually kill her. When Armand Duval, a young man of modest means but passionate heart, falls in love with her, she allows herself, briefly, to believe she might be worthy of real love. But society permits her no redemption. Armand's father arrives to remind them both that a courtesan's past can never be erased, and what follows is a devastating meditation on love, sacrifice, and the cruelty of a world that condemns women for the very nature it exploits. Dumas writes with aching tenderness of a woman who gives everything, even her final days, for a love she believes she doesn't deserve. The novel that gave us the tragic courtesan archetype, influencing everything from La Traviata to modern literature.