Chouquettes, Desnos and the evils of tobacco

On the limits of translation

Each morning I take our youngest, who’s two, to his crèche three minutes away and we stop at the bakery on the way to buy him two chouquettes. A chouquette is a little puff of the lightest kind of pastry — almost completely empty inside — studded with sugar on the top (though if you don’t eat them immediately, or it’s late in the day, the bits of sugar …