If you haven’t read ‘Nana’ – or, even more so, if you have and are hungering for a less censorious, more deeply researched and respectful biography of the 19th-century French courtesan on whom that novel by Zola is partly based – this book is for you…Valtesse would be totally at home in our self-branding society…Her consumerism, her profession, her politics…and the sheer size of her wealth, make her, alas, a woman for our time.
