What To Read

Reading the headlines about the recent protests and riots in France, we can get the facts about how the killing of teenager Nahel M. has sparked nationwide fury, debate and violence. But reading the literature of a place is where we actually grasp the underlying shifts and tension points of any society. Our list of 12 books by French authors to read now includes books published in translation mainly over the past few years that give readers a window into the current moment in France. The books featured here have made waves in France for keying into the mood, social movements or politics of our time, but also for their sublime storytelling, craft or formal innovation. Bonne Fête Nationale!

At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop

France is recovering from weeks of being rocked by protests and riots born of long-simmering tensions over police brutality and systemic racism. A stand-out in the body of fiction that reckons head-on with the colonial history underlying these tensions is the work of novelist and academic David Diop. Diop was the first French author to win the International Booker Prize in 2021 for At Night All Blood Is Black about a Senegalese soldier recruited to fight alongside the French army in World War I.

At Night All Blood Is Black was translated by Anna Moschovakis.

“From the very first pages, there is something beguiling about this slim, delicate novel… By the time we reach its shocking yet ultimately transcendent ending, the story has turned into something mystical, esoteric; it takes a cyclic shape... More than a century after World War I, a great new African writer is asking these questions in a spare yet extraordinary novel about this bloody stain on human history.” — Chigozie Obioma in The New York Times

Simple Passion by Annie Ernaux

Of course no survey of contemporary French literature would be complete without Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux. Her mostly autobiographical work resonates deeply with readers for its raw, direct and sometimes brutal treatment of personal and sensitive subjects — her love affairs, abortion, ambivalence about motherhood, to name a few. In Happening, Ernaux recounts her traumatic, near-depth experience with attempting to get an abortion 40 years earlier. Many American readers first became familiar with her after her Nobel win, and were drawn to her work in the midst of a year in which abortion rights have been rapidly receding. Where to start with Ernaux? We’d recommend Simple Passion, the story of her all-consuming, two-year love affair with a married man. 

Simple Passion was translated by Tanya Leslie.

“Annie Ernaux’s Simple Passion is a cathartic manifesto outlining the appeal of fleeting dalliances. While the affair Ernaux describes might seem superficial to many, it portrays a very basic emotion that has become very elusive: raw passion.” — Sonal Chaturvedi in Vogue

Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère

Carrère is one of France’s most celebrated writers for both his novels and his literary non-fiction. From the true story of one of France’s most notorious murderers in The Adversary (2000) to the recounting of his experience of a catastrophic tsunami while on vacation in Sri Lanka in Lives Other Than My Own (2009), his books elude categorization. His most recent acclaimed book Yoga is a deeply personal account of his efforts to live a more intentional life while struggling with a mental health crisis. It caused a scandal in France when his ex-wife accused Carrère of breaking an agreement not to write about her. 

Yoga was translated by John Lambert.

”Here, anatomised, is the white western capitalist everyman – wandering the aisles of the spiritual supermarket, shopping for garishly packaged bliss, in terror of a threat from without, blind to the threat from within, and wholly, tragically incapable of incorporating into his reality the very subject of all the diluted eastern spirituality with which he is so enamoured: the truth of suffering, the crushing inevitability of loss... Carrère offers no easy answers. He doesn’t need to. His singular, ever-expanding work, in which one pain need never obscure another, in which truths and half-truths are held not in opposition but in delicate, precarious balance, is an answer in itself.” — Sam Byers in The Guardian UK

The Anomaly by Hervé Le Tellier

Hervé Le Tellier is a French writer and core member of the literary group Oulipo, founded back in 1960 to investigate the possibility of verse written under structural constraints. His book The Anomaly became a bestselling phenomenon in Paris during the dark days of the pandemic lockdown and it was subsequently awarded The Goncourt Prize, one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world. In disparate story lines, the book follows several characters who have one thing in common: they all were on the same turbulent flight that has profoundly affected them. 

The Anomaly was translated by Adriana Hunter.

It’s a measure of Le Tellier’s masterful storytelling that he makes us wait all the way to Page 151 to find out what bizarre thing has befallen the plane in question, Air France Flight 006 from Paris to New York…his writing, well served by Adriana Hunter’s graceful translation from the French, is nimble and versatile. And it’s impossible not to feel tenderness toward the bewildered characters, with their valiant efforts to make sense of the unfathomable and to rewrite their stories according to the new reality. — Sarah Lyall in The New York Times

In the Country of Others by Leïla Slimani

Franco-Moroccan author Leïla Slimani is a literary celebrity not only for her acclaimed novels but for her role as an emissary of Francophone affairs for President Macron. She won the Goncourt Prize for her wildly popular book The Perfect Nanny, which turns racial stereotypes on their head with a story about a murderous white French caregiver employed by a North African mother. She has since turned to writing a trilogy loosely based on her own grandparents’ and parents’ history during the post-World War II era in Morocco and France. The first book in the trilogy, In the Country of Others, was released in English to acclaim in 2021 and the second book Watch Us Dance has just been released. 

Slimani’s trilogy was translated by Sam Taylor.

“In The Country of Others is a morally difficult, slow-burn story about lives being suffocated by circumstance, one that’s carried off with greater sympathy and realism than anything Slimani has done before.” —John Phipps in The Times (UK)

The Postcard by Anne Berest

Actor and writer Anne Berest was already celebrated for co-authoring How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are and Gabriële (the biography of her great-grandmother who was Marcel Duchamp’s lover and muse). But her star has risen dramatically since the publication of her fictionalized memoir The Postcard that takes a captivating look into a family's past and secrets. The Postcard follows the author's family after the arrival of a cryptic postcard that includes the names of four ancestors who were victims of the Holocaust. Controversy in the French literary world swirled around The Postcard when it was panned in a review by a juror of the prestigious Goncourt Prize, who was also a romantic partner to another finalist for the prize. The book has since won the first annual U.S. Goncourt Prize Selection last year.

The Postcard was translated by Tina Kover.

"With bracing prose, smoothly translated by Kover, Berest takes an unflinching look at antisemitism past and present... The more Anne learns of her family, the more powerful her story of reclaiming her ancestry becomes. This is brilliant." — Publishers Weekly

The Mad Women's Ball by Victoria Mas

Victoria Mas, the only debut author on our list, made waves with her historical thriller, The Mad Women’s Ball (and its subsequent adaptation for Amazon Studios), and we can only hope to see more from this author. Set in 19th-century Paris, the book tells the dramatic story of a nurse and patient who meet at an infamous psychiatric asylum where women are subject to dehumanizing experiments.

The Mad Women’s Ball was translated by Frank Wynne.

“There is a bit of history, of both the hospital, its famous doctor, and one of its more famous patients, included within the novel, explained in footnotes, which may intrigue some readers enough to spur them to further research. With a theme that could have been a dramatic Gothic novel, The Mad Women’s Ball glosses over any sensationalism and opts for a character study of one woman’s humanity and sacrifice.” — Toni V. Sweeney in New York Journal of Books

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

We encourage you to check out this backlist gem that was a veritable publishing phenomenon when it came out in 2006. Novelist and former philosophy teacher Muriel Barbery’s break-out bestseller is the fabulously named The Elegance of the Hedgehog. The story takes place in a posh Parisian apartment inhabited by the upper crust of French society, and sucks readers in with the revealing perspectives of the building’s concierge and of a troubled 12-year-old girl tenant. (Barbery’s most recent novel, One Hour of Fervor, comes out in English next year.)

The Elegance of the Hedgehog was translated by Alison Anderson.

“Despite its cutesy air of chocolate-box Paris, The Elegance of the Hedgehog is, by the end, quite radical in its stand against French classism and hypocrisy. It's intriguing that her compatriots have bought into it so enthusiastically. Clever, informative and moving, it is essentially a crash course in philosophy interwoven with a platonic love story. Though it wanders in places, this is an admirable novel which deserves as wide a readership here as it had in France.” — Viv Groskop in The Observer

Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin

Screenwriter and photographer Valérie Perrin first came to publishing bestselling novels in her late 40s. Several of her books have been translated into English, but we refer you to her most popular book, Fresh Water for Flowers, which follows the life of a cemetery caretaker in small-town France. Her quotidian routine is disrupted when the police chief comes to leave his mother’s ashes on the grave site, which begins to unravel some painful family secrets of fraught marriages and mysterious deaths.

Fresh Water for Flowers was translated by Hildegarde Serle.

“Perrin’s eye is so compassionate, her characters so many-faceted, and the various mysteries she poses so intriguing that most readers will happily go along for the long ride toward a pleasingly romantic conclusion tempered by one last funeral.” — Kirkus

The End of Eddy by Édouard Louis

At age 30, Édouard Louis is the youngest author on this list but he looms large as one of France’s most widely read authors. His novels, which have recounted his experience growing up poor and gay in a small village in France’s post-industrial northern region, deal with themes of poverty, alcoholism and racism. He taps into the psychic reality of the gilets jaunes with his characters who are disenfranchised and furious with the government. Louis is heavily influenced by French philosophy and sociology, and even released an edited volume on the work of sociologist of class Pierre Bourdieu. His highly autobiographical first novel, The End of Eddy, is a great introduction to his work. We also recommend Who Killed My Father, a searing indictment of the French political system for its abandonment of the working class, which reflects the author’s own father’s life as an example of alienation caused by this neglect.

The End of Eddy was translated by Michael Lucey.

“...a brief, poetic telling of the myriad ways societal contempt, homophobia, and poverty can kill a man… Capturing the macro and micro culprits in Who Killed My Father, Louis serves as both raconteur and son, expressing deep and considered empathy for a man whose absence looms large.” — Martha Anne Toll in NPR

The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq

And finally, we would be remiss not to mention one of France’s biggest literary exports and its most polarizing. Depending on who you ask, Michel Houellebecq is the greatest living writer of the country, or a repugnant agent provocateur whose writing has received undue attention because of his statements and writings tinged with islamophobia, sexism, racism and nihilism. If we had to refer Tertulia readers to one book by this literary enfant terrible, it would be his second novel The Elementary Particles, which launched him into the limelight in 1998.

The Elementary Particles was translated by Frank Wynne.

“Despite its daft ideas, The Elementary Particles is a fascinating read… Houellebecq brings impressive erudition and a gutsy willingness to offend to his attempt to re-think and re-imagine the bases for civilization, an ambitious task most novelists would shrink from and which earns our respect, no matter how sharply we might disagree with him. Like Huxley's Brave New World, which is cited in The Elementary Particles and obviously influenced it, Houellebecq's novel is equally fascinating and repugnant, the kind of mutant gene that keeps the evolution of the novel interesting.” — Steven Moore in The Washington Post

Paris Noir from Akashic Books

If you're a glutton for crime noir, you probably already know about the long-time Akashic Books series of noir anthologies dedicated to cities around the world from Brooklyn to Belfast to Beirut. The publisher’s Paris Noir series, which includes original stories from some of the finest contemporary French authors, was so popular that they issued a follow-up anthology of Paris Suburbs Noir. 

Paris Noir was translated by Nicole Ball.

Paris Noir The Suburbs was translated by Paul Curtis Daw.