‘Embryonic’: lost novel by French film-maker Éric Rohmer is republished

English translation of Élisabeth, the New Wave director’s 1946 book about young lovers in prewar Paris, receives rave reviews as precursor to auteur’s cinematic workIn the dog days of the second world war, 24-year-old Maurice Schérer wrote a tale of young lovers in prewar small-town France. He described lazy August swims in the Marne River east of Paris. He wrote about age-gap affairs and semi-incestuous flirtations. Schérer gallantly used a nom de plume, Gilbert Cordier, to shield his Catholic family from scandal, but he needn’t have bothered as his concerns were unfounded. The finished novel, Élisabeth, barely made a ripple