Here is an unexpected G rard Genette, looking back at his life and time with humour, tenderness and lucidity. 'Bardadrac' is the neologism a friend of his once invented to name the jumbled contents of her handbag. A way of saying that one finds a little bit of everything in this book: memories of a suburban childhood, a provincial adolescence and early years in Paris marked by a few political commitments; the evocation of great intellectual figures,...