The latest addition to my website is Julien Gracq‘s Le Rivage des Syrtes (The Opposing Shore). This is is considered Gracq’s best novel, though clearly is related to Dino Buzzati‘s Il deserto dei Tartari (The Tartar Steppe). Like the Buzzati, our hero goes to the remote outpost of a fading empire, which borders a mysterious … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Pierre Senges‘ Fragments de Lichtenberg (Fragments of Lichtenberg) . This is another glorious post-modern romp, this time taking as it starting point the relatively unknown German scientist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Lichtenberg left behind a collection of what he called Sudelbücher in German, which translates as, approximately, scrap books … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Pierre Senges‘ La réfutation majeure (The Major Refutation). This is a brilliant pastiche, allegedly the French version of a sixteenth century work by the very real Franciscan monk Antonio de Guevara. No manuscript of this work has been found and, even if it did exist, it is not … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Le Grand Troupeau (To the Slaughterhouse). This is Jean Giono’s World War I novel, telling of the horrors of that war. We follow both the fate of those left behind (but near the front), older men and women in this novel, as well as their loved … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Julien Gracq‘s Au château d’Argol (The Castle of Argol). This was Gracq’s first novel and was rejected by Gallimard, no doubt because it is somewhat overwrought. It tells of a rich, noble scion buying, sight unseen, a remote castle in Brittany, to which he invites Herminien, his best … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Regain (Harvest; later: Second Harvest). This is one of the classic 20th century French novels and beautifully written. It tells the story of Aubignane, a remote village, which has essentially been abandoned. At the start of the novel, there are only three inhabitants and one leaves, … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Julien Gracq‘s Un beau ténébreux (A Dark Stranger). This is is Gracq’s second novel, published soon after the war, and after Gracq had spent some time in a German prisoner-of-war camp. The novel is set in a fictitious Breton town, where there is a hotel for well-to-do intellectuals … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono:‘s Un de Baumugnes (Lovers are Never Losers). This is the second in Giono’s Pan trilogy of novels. This one is a love story. Amédeé, an older itinerant farm worker meets Albin, a young man from the eponymous Baumugnes, a strange (and fictitious) community of non-Catholics driven … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Ivan Jablonka‘s Laëtitia ou la Fin des hommes [Laetitia or the End of Men]. This is not really a novel but it has been sold as a novel in France and won prizes for novels so here it is. It recounts the true story of Laëtitia Perrais, who … Read more
The latest addition to my website is Jean Giono‘s Colline (Hill of Destiny; later: Hill). This is Giono’s first novel and is rightly considered a classic of French literature. It tells the story of a remote and isolated hamlet in Provence, with only thirteen inhabitants. The oldest inhabitant, a cantankerous old man called Janet, is … Read more