France

Six Heirs

“The Known World is a sprawling region ruled by mortals, protected by gods, and plied by magicians and warriors, merchants and beggars, royals and scoundrels. Here, those with the gift of the Erjak share a psychic bond with animals; a far-reaching fraternity unites criminals of every persuasion in a vast army of villainy; and upon the mighty river Alt, the dead will one day sail seeking vengeance on the enemies of their descendants.

But for all the Known World’s wonders, splendors, and terrors, what has endured most powerfully is the strange legacy of Ji. Emissaries from every nation—the grand Goranese Empire; desolate, frozen Arkary; cosmopolitan Lorelia; and beyond—followed an enigmatic summons into the unknown.

Some never returned; others were never the same. Each successive generation has guarded the profound truth and held sacred the legendary event. But now, the very last of them—and the wisdom they possess—are threatened. The time has come to fight for ultimate enlightenment…or fall to infinite darkness.”

“Volume 1 of 4 in the internationally bestselling Secret of Ji series. Winner of the Prix Ozone and Prix Julia Verlanger.”

“In a fantasy world containing magicans, gods, and mortals, telepathic communication with animals doesn’t seem to far-fetched. In this new spin on epic fantasy, Pierre Grimbert tackles a world beset with shadowy thieves and mystical empires…Grimbert looks to be one big new name to watch in the ever-expanding genre of high fantasy.” —Tor.com

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Being and Nothingness

“‘Revisit one of the most important pillars in modern philosophy with this new English translation—the first in more than 60 years—of Jean-Paul Sartre’s seminal treatise on existentialism. ‘This is a philosophy to be reckoned with, both for its own intrinsic power and as a profound symptom of our time.’ —The New York Times.

In 1943, Jean-Paul Sartre published his masterpiece, Being and Nothingness, and laid the foundation of his legacy as one of the greatest twentieth century philosophers. A brilliant and radical account of the human condition, Being and Nothingness explores what gives our lives significance.

In a new, more accessible translation, this foundational text argues that we alone create our values and our existence is characterized by freedom and the inescapability of choice. Far from being an internal, passive container for our thoughts and experiences, human consciousness is constantly projecting itself to the outside world and imbuing it with meaning.

Now with a new foreword by Harvard professor of philosophy Richard Moran, this clear-eyed translation guarantees that the groundbreaking ideas that Sartre introduced in this resonant work will continue to inspire for generations to come.”

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Nausea

“Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.

His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which ‘spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time—the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain.’

Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature (though he declined to accept it), Jean-Paul Sartre—philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist—holds a position of singular eminence in the world of French letters. 

La Nausée, his first and best novel, is a landmark in Existential fiction and a key work of the twentieth century.”

“It is the most enjoyable book Sartre has ever written.” —The New Yorker

”The best-written and most interesting of Sartre's novels.” —Atlantic Monthly

”With Nausea, Sartre has succeeded magnificently—and horribly—in extending the realm of the novel to the outermost reaches of naked self-examination”—New York Post

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Les Misérables

“Introducing one of the most famous characters in literature, Jean Valjean—the noble peasant imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread—Les Misérables ranks among the greatest novels of all time. In it, Victor Hugo takes readers deep into the Parisian underworld, immerses them in a battle between good and evil, and carries them to the barricades during the uprising of 1832 with a breathtaking realism that is unsurpassed in modern prose.

Within his dramatic story are themes that capture the intellect and the emotions: crime and punishment, the relentless persecution of Valjean by Inspector Javert, the desperation of the prostitute Fantine, the amorality of the rogue Thénardier, and the universal desire to escape the prisons of our own minds. 

Les Misérables gave Victor Hugo a canvas upon which he portrayed his criticism of the French political and judicial systems, but the portrait that resulted is larger than life, epic in scope—an extravagant spectacle that dazzles the senses even as it touches the heart.”

“Hugo's genius was for the creation of simple and recognizable myth. The huge success of Les Misérables as a didactic work on behalf of the poor and oppressed is due to his poetic and myth-enlarged view of human nature.” —V. S. Pritchett

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Panic in Paris

“It all begins innocently enough when the corpse of a London boxer is discovered at sunrise on the Place de la Concorde in Paris. But the man was reportedly seen in London only a couple of hours earlier...

A great English detective and France's leading investigative reporter team up to solve a baffling mystery that will ultimately take them to a network of vast caverns under Paris inhabited by prehistoric monsters, waiting to be released…

Jules Lermina's Panic in Paris (1910) combines the tradition of utopian fiction with both the scientific advances of the 19th century and the pseudoscientific trappings of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race (1871).

It also features some intriguing anticipations of two key works by Arthur Conan Doyle, prefiguring both The Lost World (1912) and The Poison Belt (1913). This volume also includes Lermina's classic vampire novella, The Elixir of Life (1890).”

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Voyage to Venus

“Published the same year as Jules Verne's classic From the Earth to the Moon and Henri de Parville's An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars, Achille Eyraud's Voyage to Venus (1865) was the first novel to describe an interplanetary rocket-powered spaceship.

Eyraud supports his design with an elaborate (but ultimately flawed) pseudo-scientific argument and describes its cosmic voyage in a logical manner. Once on Venus, his protagonists discover a utopian society in which the sexes are equal and solar-powered robots toil in the fields.

Voyage to Venus has often been mentioned in many histories of space travel and science fiction, although the difficulty of obtaining the original text until now meant that few have read it.

This ground-breaking work is at last available in English in its first annotated translation by award-winning author Brian Stableford.”

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Billie

“A #1 bestseller in France and translated into over twenty-five languages, Billie is one of the most beloved French novels to be published in recent years.

A brilliant evocation of contemporary Paris and a moving tale of friendship, Gavalda’s new novel tells the story of two young people, Billie and Franck, who, as the story opens, are trapped in a gorge in the Cévennes Mountains. Billie was a beaten-down girl from an impoverished family; Franck was secretly gay and weighed down by a judgmental father with high expectations. Theirs is a story of unconditional love and a deep, platonic friendship, which unfolds in a series of flashbacks as Billie begins to tell stories from their lives in order to calm them as darkness encroaches. In alternating episodes, the novel moves between recollections of the characters’ childhoods and their dire predicament.

Franck’s life has been impacted by a childhood spent with a perennially unemployed father who toyed with Christian extremism and a mother anesthetized by antidepressants. A bright kid, Franck’s future was menaced at every turn by the bigotry surrounding him. As for Billie, her abiding wish as an adult is to avoid ever having to come into contact with her family again. To escape from her abusive and alcohol-addled family, she was willing to do anything and everything. The wounds have not entirely healed.

At the heart of Gavalda’s moving story lies a generosity of spirit that will take readers’ breath away, and an unshakeable belief in the power of art to lift the most fragile among us to new vistas from which they can see futures full of hope, love, and dignity. Billie is a beautifully crafted novel for readers of all ages and from all walks of life that conveys a positive message about overcoming life’s trials and tribulations.”

“Billie is a revelation! It's Gavalda's finest novel yet.” —France 2

“The work is a testament to Gavalda's fine storytelling skills, which remain true even in the books' translation into English.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

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The Boy

“Winner of the prestigious Prix Femina, The Boy is an expansive and entrancing historical novel that follows a nearly feral child from the French countryside as he joins society and plunges into the torrid events of the first half of the 20th century.

The boy does not speak. The boy has no name. The boy, raised half-wild in the forests of southern France, sets out alone into the wilderness and the greater world beyond. Without experience of another person aside from his mother, the boy must learn what it is to be human, to exist among people, and to live beyond simple survival.

As this wild and naive child attempts to join civilization, he encounters earthquakes and car crashes, ogres and artists, and, eventually, all-encompassing love and an inescapable war. His adventures take him around the world and through history on a mesmerizing journey, rich with unforgettable characters. A hamlet of farmers fears he’s a werewolf, but eventually raise him as one of their own. A circus performer who toured the world as a sideshow introduces the boy to showmanship and sanitation. And a chance encounter with an older woman exposes him to music and the sensuous pleasures of life. The boy becomes a guide whose innocence exposes society’s wonder, brutality, absurdity, and magic.

Beginning in 1908 and spanning three decades, The Boy is as an emotionally and historically rich exploration of family, passion, and war from one of France’s most acclaimed and bestselling authors.”

“You’ll be stunned by this novel... Marcus Malte is clearly an astonishing author, oscillating between poetry, mystery, and epic, he has the ability to surprise and it’s a delight to read.” —Libération

“You’ll go from laughter to tears in this masterful account of the discovery of the world’s trials.” —La Vie

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Ortog

“These two classic French fantasy novels, written in 1960 and 1969, star Knight-Navigator Dal Ortog of Galankar who lives on a 50th century Earth where space travel cohexists with a medieval society.

First, Ortog is sent by Sopharch Karella to the far reaches of space to find a cure for the slow death that is killing humanity after a devastating interplanetary war. Ortog returns with a cure, but too late to save his love, Karella's daughter, Kalla.

In the sequel, Ortog and his friend, Zoltan Charles Henderson de Nancy, embark on a quest through the dimensions of Death to find Kalla's soul and bring her back to Earth.

’Kurt Steiner’ is the pseudonym of André Ruellan, one of France's best-known science fiction and horror writers, as well as one of its most distinguished film writers. Brian M. Stableford has been a professional writer since 1965. He has published more than 60 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as several authoritative non-fiction books.”

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Hunting and Gathering

“Prize-winning author Anna Gavalda has galvanized the literary world with an exquisite genius for storytelling.

Here, in her epic new novel of intimate lives-and filled with the ‘humanity and wit’ (Marie Claire) that has made it a bestselling sensation in France.

Gavalda explores the twists of fate that connect four people in Paris.

Comprised of a starving artist, her shy, aristocratic neighbor, his obnoxious but talented roommate, and a neglected grandmother, this curious, damaged quartet may be hopeless apart, but together, they may just be able to face the world.”

“Gavalda's comically implausible and comfortably predictable novel of misfits is a Gallic charmer anchored by breezy and poignant storytelling.” —Publishers Weekly

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The Flowers of Evil

“Les Flers du Mal, translated as The Flowers of Evil (first published in 1857), originally condemned as obscene, is recognized as a masterpiece, especially remarkable for the brilliant phrasing, rhythm, and expressiveness of its lyrics. Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was one of the greatest French poets of the 19th century. His work has been a major influence on Western poetry and modern poetry in general as, thematically, he was one of the first poets whose subject was often urban life and its dark side, with all of its evils and the degradation of its temptations.

His poems, classical in form, introduced Symbolism, he is also known as a writer of the Decadent group. Baudelaire was moody and rebellious, imbued with an intense religious mysticism, and his work reflects an unremitting inner despair. His main theme is the inseparable nature of beauty and corruption.

The Flowers of Evil is a volume of French poetry that was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. The subject matter of these poems deals with themes relating to decadence and eroticism. The author and the publisher were prosecuted under the regime of the Second Empire as an an insult to public decency. As a consequence of this prosecution, Baudelaire was fined 300 francs.

Six poems from the work were suppressed and the ban on their publication was not lifted in France until 1949. Upon reading The Swan, Victor Hugo announced that Baudelaire had created a new shudder, a new thrill in literature.”

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The Red Notebook

“Bookseller Laurent Letellier comes across an abandoned handbag on a Parisian street, and feels impelled to return it to its owner. The bag contains no money, phone or contact information.

But a small red notebook with handwritten thoughts and jottings reveals a person that Laurent would very much like to meet.

Without even a name to go on, and only a few of her possessions to help him, how is he to find one woman in a city of millions?”

”An endearing love story written in beautifully poetic prose. It is an enthralling mystery about chasing the unknown, the nostalgia for what could have been, and most importantly, the persistence of curiosity”— San Francisco Book Review

“The very quintessence of French romance. “ —The Times

(A special thank you to book club member, Christine Jensen for the suggestion.)

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Irène

“For Commandant Camille Verhoeven life is beautiful. He is happily married and soon to become a father.

But his blissful existence is punctured by a murder of unprecedented savagery. When his team discovers that the killer has form—and each murder is a homage to a classic crime novel—the Parisian press are quick to coin a nickname . . . The Novelist.

With the public eye fixed on both hunter and hunted, the case develops into a personal duel, each hell bent on outsmarting the other. There can only be one winner. The one who has the least to lose.”

"Irène is compulsive reading . . . The narrative is fast-paced and the suspense unbearably taut.” —The Sydney Morning Herald

”Pierre Lemaitre's Alex earned rave reviews last year, not least for the way Lemaitre reworked the tropes of the conventional serial-killer novel to create a clever police procedural that worked as a superb thriller even as it confounded readers' expectations of the genre. The follow-up, Irène, is equally clever, as the diminutive Parisian detective Camille Verhoeven is initially confronted with a murder scene so horrific that it puts him in mind of Goya's Saturn Devouring his Son.” ―Irish Times

(A special thank you to book club member, Penny Stephens for the suggestion.)

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The Chalk Circle Man

“Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg is not like other policemen. His methods appear unorthodox in the extreme: he doesn't search for clues; he ignores obvious suspects and arrests people with cast-iron alibis; he appears permanently distracted. In spite of all this his colleagues are forced to admit that he is a born cop.

When strange blue chalk circles start appearing overnight on the pavements of Paris, only Adamsberg takes them and the increasingly bizarre objects found within them —seriously. And when the body of a woman with her throat savagely cut is found in one, only Adamsberg realises that other murders will soon follow…”

“Rich and witty.“ —Independent

“The hottest property in contemporary crime fiction.” —Guardian

“Rich and witty.“ —Independent

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The Mote in Time's Eye

“20,000 years from now, a space ship from the human colonies of the Lesser Magellanic Clouds accidentally falls into a time trap set up by two unimaginably powerful rival empires from millions of years in the future. The ship is thrown back 200 million years into the past. Will its Captain, the heroic Varun Shangrin, succeed in returning to their own time? And how did the accident affect the time war between the two shadowy cosmic combatants?

Gérard Klein is a distinguished economist and one of France's best known science fiction writers. He also edited the prestigious science fiction imprint Ailleurs et Demain for 40 years. This new edition of this classic SF novel from 1965 also includes four short stories translated by SF Grand Master Damon Knight, and an introduction and bibliography by Jean-Marc Lofficier.”

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Submission

“It’s 2022. François is bored. He’s a middle-aged lecturer at the New Sorbonne University and an expert on J. K. Huysmans, the famed nineteenth-century novelist associated with the Decadent movement.

But François’s own decadence is of considerably smaller scale. He sleeps with his students, eats microwave dinners, and watches YouPorn.

Meanwhile, it’s election season, and in an alliance with the Socialists, France’s new Islamic party sweeps to power―and Islamic law is instituted. Women are veiled, polygamy is encouraged, and François is offered an irresistible academic advancement―on the condition that he converts to Islam.

A darkly comic masterpiece from one of France’s great writers, Submission by Michel Houellebecq has become an international sensation and one of the most discussed novels of our time.”

“Extraordinary . . . if there is anyone in literature today, not just in French but worldwide, who is thinking about the sort of enormous shifts we all feel are happening, it’s Houellebecq.” ―Le Monde

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The Awkward Squad

“Suspended from her job as a promising police officer for firing ‘one bullet too many’, Anne Capestan is expecting the worst when she is summoned to H.Q. to learn her fate. Instead, she is surprised to be told that she is to head up a new police squad, working on solving old cold cases.

Though relieved to still have a job, Capestan is not overjoyed by the prospect of her new role. Even less so when she meets her new team: a crowd of misfits, troublemakers and problem cases, none of whom are fit for purpose and yet none of whom can be fired.

But from this inauspicious start, investigating the cold cases throws up a number a number of strange mysteries for Capestan and her team: was the old lady murdered seven years ago really just the victim of a botched robbery? Who was behind the dead sailor discovered in the Seine with three gunshot wounds? And why does there seem to be a curious link with a ferry that was shipwrecked off the Florida coast many years previously?”

“Both amusing and interesting to watch this awkward squad gradually acquiring an esprit de corps . . . This very enjoyable tale has deservingly won several French literary prizes.” —Literary Review

”Misfit Paris cops bring an entertaining collection of idiosyncrasies to the newly formed cold-case team headed by impetuous detective Anne Capestan—though the fun has to stop as they start to piece together evidence of serious corruption in high places.” —Crime Club

(A special thank you to book club member, Penny Stephens for the suggestion.)

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The Dark Angel

“On the one hand, there's Lola. A grumpy retired policewoman who cannot get by without her two best friends: red wine and jigsaw puzzles. On the other, there's Ingrid, an American in love with Paris. By day she gives the best massages in the city, and her long nights are wilder still...

Their paths might not have crossed were it not for the murder of a young neighbour. Vanessa Ringer's body is found in the flat she shared with two schoolfriends, mutilated in the most cruel and unusual manner.

Suspicion falls on Maxime Duchamp, a charming restaurateur whose suave exterior hides a tragic past. Convinced of his innocence, Lola and Ingrid hit the streets to unmask the real killer.

Meanwhile, lying low, the victim's spurned lover, a high-stakes thief with one last heist to go, is plotting his revenge. His inner demon, the Dark Angel, has foreshadowed all...”

“An echo of Chandler's gallant, world-weary Philip Marlowe ... Sylvain successfully weaves a spider's web of unexplained events, suspicions and compelling motivations.” — Glasgow Herald

“Dominique Sylvain's thriller has the usual twists and turns and the obligatory dead body as expected of a crime novel. But what sets this typical piece apart from the others is the sleuths out to unmask the killer ... The writing is superb.“ —The Irish Examiner

(A special thank you to book club member, Yurena Bookish for the suggestion.)

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Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Qu'ran

“Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is one of the most performed French-language authors in the world.

Paris in the 1960s. Thirteen-year-old Moses lives in the shadow of his less-than loving father. When he's caught stealing from wise old shopkeeper Monsieur Ibrahim, he discovers an unlikely friend and a whole new world. Together they embark on a journey that takes them from the streets of Paris to the whirling dervishes of the Golden Crescent.

This delightful, moving play has already been a huge hit in Paris and New York. Performed in thirteen countries and published in twelve languages, it is also an award-winning film starring Omar Sharif.”

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Au Bonheur des Dames (aka The Ladies Delight)

“Through charm, drive, and diligent effort Octave Mouret has become the director of one of the finest new department stores in Paris, Au Bonheur des Dames.

Supremely aware of the power of his position, Mouret seeks to exploit the desire that his luxuriantly displayed merchandise arouses in the ladies who shop, and the aspirations of the young female assistants he employs.

Charting the beginnings of the capitalist economy and bourgeois society, Zola captures in lavish detail the greedy customers and gossiping staff, and the obsession with image, fashion, and gratification that was a phenomenon of nineteenth-century French consumer society. Of all Zola's novels, this may be the one with the most relevance for our own time.

Now the basis for the major BBC tv adaptation The Paradise, this is a lavish drama and a timeless commentary on consumerism. The Penguin Classics edition of Émile Zola's The Ladies' Delight is based on an acclaimed, vivid and modern translation by Robin Buss, who has also introduced the novel.”

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