Adult books set in France (11)


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1.

Happening by Annie Ernaux EN

Rating: 4 (3 votes)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
Translated from the French by Tanya Leslie 'Absolutely extraordinary' - Liberation In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and single, realises she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague. Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep her child. This is the story, written forty years later, of a trauma Ernaux never overcame. Abortion was illegal at the time and she attempted, in vain, to self-administer with a knitting needle and nearly died. An exceptionally moving account of a tragic experience.

2.

Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans EN

Rating: 5 (2 votes)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
Against Nature is Huysmans's great fin-de-siècle novel anticipating many of the strains of modernism in its appreciation of Baudelaire, Moreau, Redon, Mallarmé and Poe. This new translation is supplemented by a critically up-to-date introduction and indispensable notes which enhance the understanding of a highly allusive work.

3.

Fresh Water for Flowers by Valérie Perrin EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
A 2020 INDIES INTRODUCE PICK A POIGNANT RUNAWAY BESTSELLER full of French charm and memorable characters, Fresh Water for Flowers is Valérie Perrin's English debut. Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne. Casual mourners, regular visitors, and sundry colleagues--gravediggers, groundskeepers, and a priest--visit her to warm themselves in her lodge, where laughter, companionship, and occasional tears mix with the coffee she offers them. Her life is lived to the rhythms of their funny, moving confidences. Violette's routine is disrupted one day by the arriv... continue

4.

Where Dogs Bark with Their Tails : A Novel by Estelle-Sarah Bulle EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
The tales of one family and their larger-than-many-lives sister, Antoine, weaves together the vibrant, epic story of Guadaloupe and its diaspora. A young woman born in the suburbs of Paris--whose skin color and memories of occasional childhood visits alone connect her to her father's native Guadeloupe--yearns to understand her lineage and her métis identity. Upon her request, her old aunt Antoine, the eccentric and indomitable family matriarch, unveils the history of the Ezechiel clan, and with it, that of the island over the course of the twentieth century. In a spirited account, punctuated b... continue

5.

The Woman Destroyed by Simone De Beauvoir EN

0 Ratings
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
By the world-famous writer and feminist Simone de Beauvoir, here are three moving stories which eloquently express her understanding of women and the crises they face in mid-life.

6.

The Princess of Cleves by Madame de La Fayette (Marie-Madeleine Pioche de La Vergne) EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
Perhaps one of the greatest works of French literature is Madame de Lafayette's The Princess of Cleves, often described as the first of all "modern" novels. This classic translation, with an introduction, by the late English novelist and biographer Nancy Mitford, was first brought out in 1951 by New Directions. It is now made available as a New Directions Paperbook. Published in 1678 and written by Marie Madeleine Roche de la Vergne, Countess de Lafayette - a Parisian lady of fashion and great wit, who probably received help from her friend the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, author of the famous Max... continue


8.

Nana by Émile Zola EN

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
"Nana is probably the most famous character in Les Rougon-Macquart. The novel that bears her name, published in 1880, is the ninth volume in the series. It consists of a number of episodes, or tableaux, in the short but spectacular life of Ana Coupeau, the fourth child of Gervaise Macquart. We first saw her as a young girl in L'Assommoir (1877), her father an abusive alcoholic, her mother Gervaise reduced to a similar degraded state. She works as a milliner's assistant and dabbles in casual street prostitution. She has a child by an unknown father when she is sixteen. Having escaped from the s... continue

9.

Nana by Emile Zola DE

Rating: 5 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
„Aufstieg von der Straßenprostituierten zum Mitglied der Pariser Society: Was heute schon mehr oder minder unmöglich wäre, gestaltete sich 1880 nicht leichter. In Zolas Roman gelingt es Nana dennoch. Als sie ihre Sexualität instrumentalisiert um die höheren Stände aus Politik und Presse zu infiltrieren, muss sie feststellen, dass deren Lasterhaftigkeit und Heuchelei grenzenlos ist.“ Redaktion Gröls-Verlag (Edition Werke der Weltliteratur)

10.

You Will Not Have My Hate by Antoine Leiris EN

Rating: 4 (2 votes)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER - "On Friday night you stole the life of an exceptional person, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hate." On November 13, 2015, Antoine Leiris’s wife, Hélène Muyal-Leiris, was killed by terrorists while attending a rock concert at the Bataclan Theater in Paris, in the deadliest attack on France since World War II. Three days later, Leiris wrote an open letter addressed directly to his wife’s killers, which he posted on Facebook. He refused to be cowed or to let his seventeen-month-old son’s life be defined by Hélène’s murder. He refused... continue

11.

L'étrangère by Valérie Toranian FR

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Country: Europe / France flag France
Description:
"Elle tricote. Je sors mon carnet. - Raconte-moi précisément ce qui s'est passé dans les convois... - Plus tard... Je rêve de recueillir cette histoire qui est aussi la mienne et elle s'y oppose comme une gamine butée. - Quand plus tard ? - Quand tu auras eu ton bébé". Aravni garde farouchement le silence sur son passé. Sa petite-fille, Valérie, aimerait pourtant qu'elle lui raconte son histoire, l'Arménie, Alep, Constantinople et Marseille. Dans ce récit qui traverse le siècle, elle écrit le roman de la vie, ou plutôt des vies d'Aravni : de la toute jeune fille fuyant le génocide arménien en ... continue