Alphonse Daudet was a highly popular nineteenth-century French novelist, whose work radiated humour and good cheer.Few knew that for his entire adult life he suffered from syphilis, a disease both unmentionable and incurable at the time.What even fewer realised was that he kept an intimate not in which he recorded the development and terrifying effects of the disease.Describing a life in pain, and the sometimes alarming treatments he underwent, Daudet's journal is unique for its comic zest, lucid self-examination and stoicism. Translated by the Booker Prize-winning writer Julian Barnes.