Read Cyrano de Bergerac in Frenchwith every sentence explained

Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand was first published in 1897. In Passage you read the full text in the original French, marked advanced and filed under historical fiction and romance. It runs to about 37,600 words.

He has the sharpest sword in Paris, the quickest wit... and the biggest nose.

Paris, 1640. Cyrano de Bergerac, poet, soldier and fearless duellist of the Gascon cadets, can compose a ballad while winning a sword fight. Yet he dares not tell his beautiful cousin Roxane that he loves her. Who could ever love a face like his?

When Roxane confides that she has fallen for Christian, a handsome new cadet who is hopeless with words, Cyrano strikes a heartbreaking bargain. He will lend Christian his voice, writing the letters and whispering the speeches that will win her heart.

Edmond Rostand's play, written in sparkling rhymed verse, was a triumph from its first night in 1897. It remains the most popular play in French theatre and has been adapted countless times, notably in the 1990 film starring Gérard Depardieu. Read it aloud: it was made for the stage.

Passage sets the book as a quiet, paginated reader in French. Read at your own pace, and when a sentence stops you, tap it. You get:

• a natural translation of that exact sentence,
• a short note on the grammar, in plain words,
• the key words, which you can save with the sentence they came from,
• all of it in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish or Portuguese, whichever you read best.

It's marked advanced, with richer vocabulary and longer sentences. If it feels heavy, start with an intermediate French book and come back to it. The words you save come back later in short review games, so the book keeps teaching after you close it.