Chocolat is a 1999 novel by Joanne Harris. It tells the story of Vianne Rocher, a young single mother, who arrives in the French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes at the beginning of Lent with her six-year-old daughter, Anouk. Vianne has arrived to open a chocolaterie La Céleste Pralinewhich is on the square opposite the church. During the traditional season of fasting and self-denial she gently change the lives of the villagers who visit her with a combination of sympathy, subversion and a little magic.