The Grimoire is a textbook on commutative algebra
for advanced master students and graduate students,
that I started writing in early 2014, and completed
in January 2022.
Some of its last chapters could be interesting also
to more advanced researchers. It is written in French.
Here you can freely download the complete and final text :
Your comments are welcome and gratefully acknowledged!
The Blog of the Grimoire Project
documented the project from its beginnings in 2014 all the way to its
conclusion in January 2022.
UPDATE November 2026 : As announced earlier this year,
the old website of Les Presses Insoumises is now closed for good. Henceforth, you
can only command your copy of the book from
the new website.
This website is as functional as the other one, and no customer seems to have encountered
any issues with it, but in case you have any questions, send me your feedback!
UPDATE October 2026 : It has been brought to my
attention that somebody has used AI tools to produce a chinese translation
of the Grimoire, and is selling it as a PDF file on a chinese social website,
for a modest sum (15 Yuan, corresponding to about 2 Euros). I was initially
mildly annoyed : the Grimoire is copylefted, so everybody is entitled to make
copies of it, but not for commercial uses. But upon reflection, I have somewhat
altered my initial stance : I have obtained a copy of the PDF file, and I must
say that it looks like a good job, typographically and esthetically; also,
a chinese mathematician that has had a look at it tells me that this appears
to be a careful translation, probably made via a non-free AI tool : in other
words, the production of this chinese translation of the Grimoire has likely
entailed some non-trivial efforts and expenses, so the 15 Yuan price should
rather be considered as cost-sharing, which is still covered by the
non-commercial use provision. At least, that is how I have chosen to view it.
Hence, rather than censoring this initiative, I'd like to advertize it to
chinese-speaking potential readers of the Grimoire : if you're more
comfortable with the chinese language than with french, you can head on to
this internet address where
you will be able to download this translation for 15 Yuan. (I understand that
the person who produced this translation also offers at the same address other
translations of copyrighted published texts, but I'll look discreetly the other way.)
UPDATE May 2026 : Yesterday,
the new website
of Les Presses Insoumises was unveiled! The new website of LPI is hosted
by the cloud computing company Netlify and will eventually replace the
current website, that is hosted by Ecwid. Both the new and the old websites
are currently functional, but the Ecwid website will be deactivated around
early November this year. The Ecwid product was originally available free
of charge, but last year the free option was discontinued, and replaced by
a basic plan that charges 72 Euros per year. This plan has the same solid,
efficient and user-friendly capabilities as the original free plan, and the
price is certainly more than reasonable for the budget of most e-business.
But LPI is a micro-business that runs on essentially no budget at all, relying
on free-of-charge and open source tools and services as much as possible, so
I've been looking for alternative hosting solutions, and the website hosting
offers of Netlify do provide an excellent solution.
The coding for the website was developed with the invaluable assistance of
Claude, Anthropic's AI, that kindly made available his competence for free.
The result is a fully functional website, on which you can order our volumes
and pay by credit card, just as on the Ecwid website. The credit card transaction
is still handled by Stripe, so enterprise-level privacy and security are still
assured. Check it out and let me know what you think!
UPDATE June 2025 : An unfortunate news
concerning the shipping rates for the Grimoire : until now, for
destinations outside France, we used a special shipping option
(the so-called "tariffe livres et brochures") reserved for sending
abroad cultural material written in french. This tariff was created
22 years ago by the french postal service, as a means to encourage
the spread of french culture in the world. Unfortunately, in the
last several years, priorities have been shifting, and
early this year the french postal service has
announced that this tariff will be discontinued in July.
This leaves countless of small french independent publishers and
self-publishing authors without a good option for shipping their
works to non-french audiences. Indeed, the alternatives are much
more expensive : as a result of these changes, the cost of shipping
the Grimoire outside France will rise sharply, starting from July :
for european destinations it will be around 25 Euros, and for other
destinations it should be probably around 35 Euros. So, if you are
a resident of a non-european country, you might want to find some
friend who lives in Europe (or better, in France), have the book
shipped to them, and ask them to bring it over to you on their
next trip! (Just a suggestion)
UPDATE June 2023 :
The second printing of the Grimoire is here! It has taken a little more
than one year to reach this milestone! The price of the second printing
is the same as for the first printing; the second printing corrects all
the misprints that have been pointed out by our eagle-eyed readers. The
paper is slightly different : whereas the grammage of the first printing
was 50gr/m^2, for the second printing I've tried 60gr/m^2 : this means
that the volume is about 200gr heavier, and also 7mm thicker. Apart from
that, it is still the same friendly satanic volume!
As of April 12, 2022, the Grimoire is available
in print. In March 2022 I have created the Publishing House
Les Presses Insoumises
to publish and distribute the paper version
of the Grimoire. Here is the website (see the update above of May 2026) :
From the publisher's website you can buy
the book for 50 Euros
plus shipping expenses : we ship all over the world!
The payment is via credit card, just like you would do on Amazon.
If you're interested in such things, the credit card securized
transaction is handled via Stripe.
By the way : if you think this project is useful, one easy
way to support it, is by asking your local math library to buy
one (or more) copies.
The book can also be ordered from several french bookstores; here
is a sample :
Though, if you live in Paris you can also contact me directly,
and then I can meet you somewhere to hand you a copy : in this
way you avoid the shipping expenses.