Used book – The Leopard Child - Renaudot Prize 1999, Daniel Picouly

October 16, 1793. In her cell at the Conciergerie, Marie Antoinette prepares to die. Outside, a final plot has formed. There are only twelve hours left to save the queen.

Meanwhile, in the tumultuous Paris of the Revolution, a mysterious leopard child is being hunted. Some to protect him. Others to kill him. But who is this coveted leopard child? Is it true that he is the hidden son of a great lady of the kingdom, or even of the queen herself? Hard to believe. And yet...

Daniel Picouly invites us on a wild romantic chase behind this mystery. The intrigues intertwine, the twists and turns jostle like in Alexandre Dumas. The two black inspectors who are searching for the child, in a strange Harlem behind the Luxembourg, come straight out of Chester Himes' universe. An opportunity to remember that Dumas himself was biracial.

This joyful novel, as whimsical as it is erudite, and which paints a moving portrait of Marie Antoinette, a murdered mother, a foreigner who became a scapegoat, earned its author the Prix Renaudot 1999.