Vianne

Vianne is a 2025 novel by British author Joanne Harris. It is a prequel to her 1999 novel Chocolat, and is the fifth novel in the Chocolat series. It also exists as an audiobook, narrated by the author. The novel is set six years before Chocolat, and finds the heroine, Vianne Rocher, aged twenty-one, newly bereaved, and homeless in the French city of Marseille. Still grieving the death of her mother, but determined to give her unborn child a better life than the one she has had, Vianne finds employment in a bistrot in the Old Quarter of Marseille, and learns how to use the cookery book left to the owner, Louis Martin, by his dead wife, Margot. She also befriends Guy Lacarrière, who is trying to open a boutique chocolaterie in the Old Quarter, in the face of all obstacles.

From the Wikipedia article “Vianne (novel)”, CC BY-SA 4.0.