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12 Best Books to Read Now by Contemporary French Authors

12 Best Books to Read Now by Contemporary French Authors
12 Best Books to Read Now by Contemporary French Authors
Tertulia staff •
Jul 11st, 2025

Our list of 12 books by French authors to read now includes books published in translation 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 lecture!


Live Fast by Brigitte Giraud

Only the 13th woman to win France's 121-year old prestigious Prix Goncourt in its 121 year history, Brigitte Girard was honored for this haunting work of autofiction that looks back at the death of her husband Claude in a motorcycle accident decades earlier. Live Fast retraces the tiny moments and decisions that led to the accident, asking "what if" at every turn -- and the reader is left reflecting on how fragile our everyday lives really are.

Live Fast was translated by Cory Stockwell.

"Clocking in at a snappy 159 pages, this is one of those rare books that works in two directions. It pulls you completely into its reality — believe me, it's a page turner — but also sends you back out into the mystery of living. It gets you pondering your own losses and how you deal with all those what-ifs that rise up in every life." — John Powers on NPR


At Night All Blood Is Black by David Diop

A stand-out in the body of fiction that reckons head-on with France's colonial history, which underlies so many of the country's contemporary social 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 massively bestselling phenomenon in Paris during the dark days of the pandemic lockdown and it was subsequently awarded The Goncourt Prize. In disparate story lines blending sci-fi, thriller and crime, the book follows several characters who have one thing in common: they all were on the same turbulent flight from Paris to New York 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 two books in the trilogy, In the Country of Others (2021) and Watch Us Dance (2024) have been released in English to great acclaim

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 in 2022.

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

Anne Berest collaborated several years later with her sister Claire Berest to write Gabriële, a novel set in the height of the Belle Époque, following the brilliant, young artist Gabriële, who becomes involved in a fervent affair with Francis Picabia and Marcel Duchamp that changed the course of art history. That artist was modeled on the real-world artist Gabriële Buffet who just happened to be the Berests' great grandmother!


The Mystery Guest: A True Story by Grégoire Bouillier

Memoirist Grégoire Bouillier

This is the unlikely but true account of one man's heartbreak and renewal through a passion for literature -- set mainly during the course of one night when he attends a birthday party as a surprise guest and runs into his ex. Along the way, he abandons his signature turtlenecks, splurges his rent money on a vintage 1964 Bordeaux that remains unopened, and ultimately reveals an inner monologue so vulnerable yet so absurd that you can't help but laugh aloud. When it first appeared in English, this book was named one of the year’s best books by critics (including at Slate and the San Francisco Chronicle) — there's really nothing quite like it. (This book was also the February pick by Belletrist book club, which held a rousing discussion of the book, resulting in a lot more book recommendations!)

This edition of The Mystery Guest was translated by Ben Truman.

“Somewhere out in the woeful constellation of literary comparison, a lonely satellite drifts between remote stars—Ulysses and Mrs. Dalloway, The Stranger and When Harry Met Sally—beguilingly reflecting the distant light of each. Taped to the bottom of that satellite is this perfect little book, a message to extraterrestrial intelligence that says: We are human, heartbroken, grim, and funny in our despair, yet hopeful and miracle-prone, and some of us are French.”— John Hodgman


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, came out in English last 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 32, Édouard Louis is the youngest author on this list so far but he looms large as one of France’s most widely read authors and one of the most important voices of his generation. 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. Follow this debut with his most recent autobiographical novel, Change, which was on best-of-the-year lists from Vogue, BBC and The New Yorker when it was published in English last year.

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. The author has said his novel Annihilation from last year is to be his last. 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


Bonus Pick:

My Husband by Maud Ventura

We can't help ourselves from updating this round-up with a fresh new voice: Maud Ventura. Her debut novel, a bestseller in France which went on to be a global sensation, is a domestic noir about a sophisticated French woman spends her life obsessing over her perfect husband...until she just might take it too far. She also just came out with Make Me Famous, a Tertulia staff pick this past May -- but we recommend starting with My Husband, which fans have likened to Patricia Highsmith and Gone Girl.

My Husband was translated by Emma Ramadan.

"Ventura does an excellent job of slowly escalating the narrator's neuroses ... And yet the book, while disturbing, is also very funny ... Will have you thinking hard about the meaning of love." —Laurie Hertzel in The Star Tribune

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