The Reading Guide to the French Elections
Are you puzzled by the French elections? We have exactly what you need. In much the same way as our friends from Penguin (see their post), The French Book Office has a few suggestions of French titles recently published in French and in English. Thank you to the bookshop La Page for helping us making this selection!
You Will Not Have My Hate, Antoine Leiris
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 to let the killers have their way. Instantly, that short Facebook post caught fire, and was reported on by newspapers and television stations all over the world. In his determination to honor the memory of his wife, he became an international hero to everyone searching desperately for a way to deal with the horror of the Paris attacks and the grim shadow cast today by the threat of terrorism.
Socialisme et sociologie, Bruno Karsenti & Cyril Lemieux
This book combines three studies on the current crisis of socialism and the probem of the nationalist hegemony in France. This first led the two authors to redefine socialism to go back to the root of the problem, and then to show what social sciences can bring to politics. Bruno Karsenti and Cyril Lemieux also present their analysis of the future of Europe, focusing on the issues of education and ecology.
What would happen if Marine Le Pen was elected President of the French Republic on May 7th? Historian and Professor François Durpaire has worked with illustrator Farid Boudjellal to imagine one of the many scenarii of the French elections.
Compass, Mathias Enard
As night falls over Vienna, Franz Ritter, an insomniac musicologist, takes to his sickbed with an unspecified illness and spends a restless night drifting between dreams and memories, revisiting the important chapters of his life: his ongoing fascination with the Middle East and his numerous travels to Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus, and Tehran. An immersive, nocturnal, musical novel, full of generous erudition and bittersweet humour, Compass is a journey and a declaration of admiration, a quest for the otherness inside us all and a hand reaching out – like a bridge between West and East, yesterday and tomorrow.
Come and discover Compass at the Beyond Words Festival!
The Arab of the Future, Riad Sattouf
Riad Sattouf’s unforgettable story of a childhood spent in the shadow of Muammar Gaddafi, Hafez al-Assad—and his own father. In striking, virtuoso graphic style that captures both the immediacy of childhood and the fervor of political idealism, Riad Sattouf recounts his nomadic childhood growing up in rural France, Gaddafi’s Libya, and Assad’s Syria—but always under the roof of his father, a Syrian pan-Arabist who drags his family along in his pursuit of grandiose dreams for the Arab nation. Brimming with life and dark humor, The Arab of the Future reveals the truth and texture of one eccentric family in an absurd Middle East; it also introduces a master cartoonist in a work destined to stand as a classic of graphic memoir.
J'irai dormir à l'Assemblée, Hélène Bekmézian
Have a peek behind the curtains of the French Assemblée Nationale, where laws are voted and deals between parties, friends and ennemies are made. Hélène Bekmézian compares this Temple of the Law to a schoolyard to show the dynamics at work. The 577 representatives are pictured relentlessly arguing, fighting, reconciling and debating until, finally, pushing the voting button to decide of the lives of 66 million people.
La nuit du second tour, Eric Pessan
On the night of the second ballot of the French presidential elections, the unthinkable did happen. David finds himself walking in the street, surrounded by chaos, riots and the debacle of his personnal life. Mina, on the other hand, has made the choice to take a single ticket to the West Indies to escape the consequences of the elections. The novel shows two human beings whose lives are being swept away by the political events.
The End of Eddy, Edouard Louis
Before I had a chance to rebel against the world of my childhood, that world rebelled against me. In truth, confronting my parents, my social class, its poverty, racism and brutality came second. From early on I provoked shame and even disgust from my family and others around me. The only option I had was to get away somehow. This book is an effort to understand all that.’ Édouard Louis grew up in Hallencourt, a village in northern France where many live below the poverty line. His bestselling debut novel about life there, The End of Eddy, has sparked debate on social inequality, sexuality and violence. It is an extraordinary portrait of escaping from an unbearable childhood, inspired by the author’s own. Written with an openness and compassionate intelligence, ultimately, it asks, how can we create our own freedom?
Come and discover The End of Eddy at the Beyond Words Festival!
The Kingdom, Emmanuel Carrère Corinth, ancient Greece, two thousand years ago. An itinerant preacher, poor, wracked by illness, tells the story of a prophet who was crucified in Judea, who came back from the dead, and whose return is a sign of something enormous. Like a contagion, the story will spread over the city, the country and, eventually, the world. Emmanuel Carrère's astonishing historical epic tells the story of the mysterious beginnings of Christianity, bringing to life a distant, primeval past of strange sects, apocalyptic beliefs and political turmoil. In doing so Carrère, once himself a fervent believer, questions his own faith, asks why we believe in resurrection, and what it means. The Kingdom is his masterpiece.
Submission¸ Michel Houellebecq In a near-future France, François, a middle-aged academic, is watching his life slowly dwindle to nothing. His sex drive is diminished, his parents are dead, and his lifelong obsession – the ideas and works of the nineteenth-century novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans – has led him nowhere. In a late-capitalist society where consumerism has become the new religion, François is spiritually barren, but seeking to fill the vacuum of his existence.
Les Premiers, Xabi Molia One day, Jean-Baptiste finds out that he can fly. At the exact same time in France, six other men and women of discover that they share that power. They soon turn out to be able to do many other spectacular things. The novel paints the lives of those heroes who have not chosen their destiny, in a country that is shaken by a relentless crisis.
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