Devotion

A short book by Patti Smith that sets an original story beside an account of how she came to write it.

The first section is a tale of obsession involving a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector and a relationship built on need. The second retraces the sources of the story. Smith travels through the South of France to Camus's house, visits the garden of the publisher Gallimard, tracks down Simone Weil's grave in a cemetery outside London and walks the Paris streets of Patrick Modiano's novels. She opens her notebooks along the way. The volume runs to 112 pages with 11 black-and-white illustrations and belongs to the Why I Write series.

Smith is a National Book Award-winning author whose earlier books include Just Kids, M Train and Year of the Monkey. Devotion turns from her life story to the working life of a writer, the subject of the Why I Write series.