This rating is for the French translation, which was the only edition I could get a hold of through my library. The book itself, content-wise, is fine, but the tale seems longer in the telling in French. There were also some weird translator’s notes. For example, a bit where an English source uses the term “agent provocateur”, which has passed into the English language, and the translator leaves a note saying that agent provocateur was in French in the English source. Why point that out? What bugged me more, and what often bugs me about English-language biographies that quote from sources not in the same language as the biography, is that there was no statement about “all translations are the translator’s unless otherwise stated”. I would want to know whether the translator could have used existing French translations of English sources or if he had to translate all of the quotes as well. (A related thing I wonder about in English-language non-fiction is when people quote from non-English sources but have clearly translated them. Too few people state whether they’ve done the work themselves or relied on others. Sometimes this information comes up in the acknowledgements, but it should be in the text as well.) ( )