Preface, by Damien Chazelle -- 'It's not true, it's not false. It's just life.' Foreword / by Stéphane Lerouge -- My Friend the Piano -- The War at Eight -- 14, rue de Madrid -- Mademoiselle -- Spring of '44 -- Childhood Summers -- Raymond -- Summer Tours -- 6, rue Jenner -- Paris-New York -- Dizzy, Miles and Co. -- New Waves, Old Waves -- The First Half of Demy -- The Second Half of Demy -- Passport to Hollywood -- How Dark is Your Soul? -- I Sing -- The Union of Dwarf Aviators -- Three Images of Steve McQueen -- My Substitute Fathers -- Writing Situations -- Macha, Act I -- The Go-Between -- Through Walls and Across Borders -- Sarah, Stan, Stéphane & Co. -- Macha, Act II -- The Ones That Got Away -- A Scent Like the End of the World -- Elle s'appelle Barbra -- Fraternizing with the Enemy -- From Chaplin to Beauvois -- Citizen Orson -- Macha, Act III -- Waiting for Tomorrow -- The Sunlight of His Music, An afterword / by Macha Méril

"Abstract: This is the autobiography of Michel Legrand (1932-2019), the famous French composer and songwriter best known for his Oscar-winning movie soundtracks, including The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Thomas Crown Affair, and Barbra Streisand's directorial debut Yentl, and for his hit song 'The Windmills of Your Mind', originally sung by Noel Harrison. As told in a series of interviews with French author Stéphane Lerouge, he describes his life - from a drab childhood enlivened by his love of music, through wartime adventures as an adolescent and the years he spent studying at the Conservatoire de Paris, to his long and prolific career as a composer. The story is not told in chronological order, however, with Legrand preferring to begin with an event unfolding in his life at the time, then moving back through his memories of particular people or places or themes. This unusual structure gives the book a liveliness and unpredictability that makes it feel less like a standard autobiography and more like a conversation"--