Reading Europe celebrates France
In the run-up to the EU referendum, independent publisher Dedalus launched the "Reading Europe" project. Its aim? To "take the opportunity to find out something more about fellow members and neighbours. The recommended titles have been selected to let the reader know the literature, history and culture of each country better." Remember, we told you about it in this article.
Get your pen out and take notes: here are the two titles chosen to give a literary insight into France, and further recommendations by Dedalus!
RECOMMENDED TITLE FROM FRANCE
Rough Trade by Dominique Manotti translated by Margaret Crossland and Elfreda Powell (Arcadia) ISBN 1 900850 87 2, 266 pages, £7.99 It traces the dark, sinuous paths of sinister events that are unfolding in Le Sentier, the heart of the Parisian rag-trade. One spring morning a Thai girl is found dead in a fashion workshop, inciting a tangle of illicit events involving illegal immigration, oppressed sweatshop workers, prostitution rings, and a gay police officer and his Turkish lover. Other mysterious secrets lie hidden in the upper registers of Parisian society in this morality tale of late-20th-century Paris.
The Book of Nights by Sylvie Germain translated by Christine Donougher (Dedalus) ISBN 978 1 81 5, 278 pages, £9.99 One hundred years of French history and three Franco-Prussian Wars seen through the eyes of the Peniel family. Sylvie Germain creates a magically bizarre universe around the patriarch of the family. nicknamed Night-of-Gold-Wolf-Face and his fifteen children, each distinguished by a gold speck in their left eye.
FURTHER READING FOR FRANCE FROM DEDALUS
Dedalus has translated over a hundred books from French into English so what follows is a small selection.
Contemporary fiction
The novels of Sylvie Germain
Dedalus has translated eleven novels, including The Book of Nights, from Sylvie Germain. We recommend to continue from The Book of Nights with the early 'French' novels with their big canvasses, larger-than-life characters set in 'la France profonde'.
Days of Anger translated by Christine Donougher ISBN 978 1 873982 65 5, 248 pages, £8.99
'A murdered woman, lying buried in the forests of the Morvan, is the still beating heart of Days of Anger. A rich, eventful saga of blood, angels, obsession and revenge, this marvellous novel is a compulsive, magical read, passionate and spell binding.' James Friel in Time Out
Night of Amber translated by Christine Donougher ISBN 978 1 873982 95 2,336 pages, £8.99
'There is little that can be said that would do justice to the controlled brilliance of Sylvie Germain's writings - Night of Amber is a fantastic book, a wildly inventive novel about childhood, death, war and much else. It creates a rich fantasy world, yet it is also very moving, and deals with the emotions of grief and love with an understanding and insight which few writers can match.' Edward Platt in The Sunday Times
The Medusa Child translated by Liz Nash ISBN 978 1 873982 31 0, 256 pages, £8.99
'Sylvie Germain's The Medusa Child beautifully translated from the French by Liz Nash, tells a heartbreaking and violent story about sin and redemption in fantastical language; a myth from la France profonde.' Michelle Roberts in Books of the Year in The Independent on Sunday
Mr Dick, or The Tenth Book by Jean-Pierre Ohl translated by Mike Mitchell ISBN 978 1 903517 94 9, 224 pages, £9.99
'Mr Dick is an odd and hugely entertaining novel, full of mock-scholarship, ghosts, impersonations, forgery and murder. Dickens, both a conventional man and wild poetic spirit, would have admired the skillful mixture.' William Palmer in the Independent
Lobster by Guillaume Lecasble translated by Polly McClean ISBN 978 1 903517 34 5, 120 pages, £6.99
'On board the Titanic, a lobster is saved from death at the moment he was about to be boiled. Now red, yet alive, he manages to escape, but not before an erotic moment with the woman that ate his father. This weird and wonderful little fable is like the awful offspring of Hans Christian Andersen and Salvador Dali.' S.B.Kelly in Scotland on Sunday
'There was a Lobster-shaped hole in world literature which has now been filled by this remarkable work.' Nick Lezard's choice for The Guardian's paperback of the week.
Ink in the Blood by Stephanie Hochet translated by Mike Mitchell ISBN 978 1 910213 11 7, 77 pages, £7.99
'This is a novella that is greater than the sum of its parts - it is, of course, about more than just tattooing. There is a psychological cohesion to it that is all the more important when you are telling a story of what is, essentially, a descent into madness. And a journey into illness, too: there is some tricksy wordplay on 'leukaemia' that left me wondering how on earth Mike Mitchell, the translator, managed it.'Hochet' is French for 'rattle'; this is a good rattling, as in unsettling, story.' Nick Lezard's Choice in The Guardian
My Little Husband by Pascal Bruckner translated by Mike Mitchell ISBN 978 1 90923231 0, 120 pages, £6.99
'The bizzare details of Leon's miniaturised life are comically rendered, but a darker sensibility is at play. Never a fan of political correctness, Bruckner in this jeu d'esprit develops a less than whimsical meditation on masculinity, marriage and parenting. As Leon's therapist reminds his pint-sized client: 'You must realise, old chap, that every woman turns her husband into a child. It's the story of every marriage… At first he's My Wild Beast, then My Pet, finally My Baby. Emma Hagerstadt in The Independent
Memoir
A Dutiful Son by Pascal Bruckner translated by Mike Mitchell ISBN 978 1 910213 16 2, 176 pages, £9.99
Pascal Bruckner's memoir reads like a novel, a Bildungsroman which charts his journey from pious Catholic child to leading philosopher and writer on French culture. The key figure in Bruckner's life is his father, a virulent anti-Semite, who voluntarily went to work in Germany during the Second World War. He is a violent man who beats his wife. The young Bruckner soon reacts against his father and his revenge is to become his polar opposite, even to the point of being happy to be called a 'Jewish thinker', which he is not. 'My father helped me to think better by thinking against him. I am his defeat.' A great read for anyone interested in the 1960s, the intellectual life of France and the father and son relationship.
Classic Fiction
The novels of J-K.Huysmans
Dedalus has published 9 books by J.-K.Huysmans as well as the the biography written by Charles Baldick and we recommend the reader begins with sketches of Parisian life and his ground-breaking decadent novels.
Parisian Sketches translated by Brendan King ISBN 978 1 903517 24 6, 224 pages, £8.99
'Sharing a common milieu that of the Impressionist circle, J.K.Huysmans' effervescent portrait of Parisian life in the 1880s captures a moment in time with vivid, sensory precision. Here is the world of the flamboyant Folies-Bergere and the Opera Garnier, showgirls and streetwalkers all filtered through the consciousness of a shrewd observer who paints Paris' vibrant hues with both affection and candour.' The Good Book Guide
Against Nature translated by Brendan King ISBN 978 1 903517 65 9, 315 pages, £8,99
Against Nature is Huysmans's great fin-de-siècle novel anticipating many of the strains of modernism in its appreciation of Baudelaire, Moreau, Redon, Mallarme and Poe. 'It will be the biggest fiasco of the year - but I don't care a damn! It will be something nobody has ever done before, and I shall have said what I had to say.' As J.-K. Huysmans announced in 1884, Against Nature was fated to be a novel like no other.
La-Bas translated by Brendan King ISBN 978 1 873982 74 7, 336 pages, £9.99
'Huysmans' dark masterpiece, published in the same year as The Picture of Dorian Gray, is a serious, uncompromisingly learned depiction of the Hell through which the search for spiritual meaning must lead. The protagonist, Durtal, is investigating the life of Gilles de Rais, mass-murderer and unlikely - or not so unlikely - companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. Long meditations on the nature of art, guilt, the satanic and the divine take him to a black mass. This superb new translation by Brendan King vividly recalls the allusive, proto-expressionist vigour of the original; images snarl and spring at the reader. A fine introduction shows where Huysmans's mystical quest ended, and the notes prove vital.' Murrough O'Brien in The Independent on Sunday
by Jan Potocki translated by Christinbe Donougher ISBN 978 0 946626 67 0,160 page, £5.99
'As a reader you find yourself teased, intrigued and disorientated. You never quite know where you are - whether you are reading a series of lies, illusions and superstitious tales, or whether this is a great work of art with its own special kind of truth. Although the book clearly has roots in medieval forms, it is also amazingly modern - predating the works of Italo Calvino and the Magical Realists by at least 150 years, and, incidentally, making them look rather tame. The English translation by Christine Donougher is a model of clarity and quiet elegance.' Book Choice, BBC World Service
Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost translated by Steve Larkin ISBN 978 1 873982 77 8, 210 pages, £7.99
'Manon is the perfidious object of the Chevalier des Grieux's affections. She betrays him; his love for her threatens his every moral tenet, yet he clings to a belief in the redemptive power of love. Manon Lescaut is both operatic high tragedy and picaresque adventure. As Larkin's introduction emphasises, the ambiguity of the Jesuitical Des Grieux means that this love is far from innocent, and an enduring puzzle.' Isobel Montgomery in The Guardian
Anthology
The Dedalus Book of French Horror edited by Terry Hale and translated by Liz Heron ISBN 978 1 873982 87 7, 361 pages, £10.99 'Hale's inspired selection - he includes little-known pieces by Sade, Baudelaire, Dumas and Maupassant, as well as stories by unjustly forgotten writers such as Catulle Mendes, Jean Pichepin, Charles Nodier and Petrus Borel - not only makes this an invigorating collection to read. it virtually redefines the boundaries of the French horror genre.' Brendan King in The Times Literary Supplement