Centuries of wisdom and blood
France and the world were stunned by shock and horror at the beginning and end of 2015 when terrorist fundamentalists spread fear and murder across Paris. Hunting down the culprits, locating their networks and above all untangling and striving to understand their motives and ultimate purpose has become a daily agenda, with ramifications far beyond...
Not for the ordinary reader
Émile Zola thoroughly enjoyed being the bête noire of French letters and the gadfly of the literary imagination, constantly challenging what writing, novel writing in particular, was all about. He was unflinching in his project of redefining literature as an enterprise of scientific scrutiny into society’s innards and gutters. He became the leading figure of...
The cemetery
He had a bad night. On waking, he remembered he was due to follow Madeleine and was mortified by the joy he felt at the prospect. Try as he would, however, he couldn’t rid himself of it. It clung to him, humble but obstinate, like a dog you haven’t the heart to chase away. He...
Fleet of word and deed
We know perhaps too much about Paul Morand, and certainly too little. Distillations of his being, his writer’s essence and his place in history most often focus on his celebrated friendships with Chanel and Proust, his occasionally bombastic, somewhat affected and at times self-glorifying public persona, his casual intolerance of much that did not conform...
A monumental construction
Maylis de Kerangal’s Birth of a Bridge by is a strikingly original contemporary myth and a thrilling investigation of post-modernity. The story is simple, absorbingly technical, full of tactile details and well-grounded practicalities. In a realistically imaginary city in California called Coca, a powerful mayor who has climbed to the summit of success from the...
Pablo
An award-winning graphic biography of one of the world’s best-loved artists, Pablo follows Picasso’s artistic career from his origins in penury to the advent of modern art. In early 20th-century Paris, 19-year-old Pablo Picasso finds himself living amongst the bohemians of Montmartre. Impoverished and in a turbulent relationship with his muse, ‘La Belle Fernande’, his...
Perseus and the Gorgons
Perseus’ meeting with Hermes had bolstered up his spirits, and he came to the mountain where the three Graeae lived feeling confident. The air was scalding hot and a cloud of dust rose at each step he took. The closer he approached, the more the landscape turned grey. The rays of the sun did not...
Rainstorm
You could bang your fist on the earth as you might bang it on the table. We’ve been waiting so long for the fight to begin. For days and days the sky had been filled with a heavy lead and a heat that stunted the horizon, shackled the wind, and made people and animals feel...
Best of Enemies Vol 2: 1953–1984
The second volume of Jean-Pierre Filiu and David B.’s graphic novel history of US-Middle East relations begins in the 1950s with the Eisenhower Doctrine and ends with the fallout from the suicide bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut. This turbulent era of US-led intervention also saw the Suez Crisis, the Six-Day War, the Iranian...
Weapons of mass diplomacy
Written by a former speechwriter and adviser to French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin, and set during the run-up to something very like the Iraq conflict, Weapons of Mass Diplomacy is a political satire that gets under the skin of modern politics and diplomatic relations. Published in France as Quai d’Orsay, it won the Grand...
Animal scruples
Two poems from La Fontaine’s Selected Fables, relating that the natures of two-legged and four-legged creatures have a great deal in common. From a delightful new translation with an introduction and explanatory notes by Christopher Betts published by Oxford University Press, and illustrated throughout with Gustave Doré’s exquisite original engravings. The rat and the...
A fortunate tyranny
A monstrous pride and an incessant affectation spoil Napoleon’s character. At the time of his supremacy, what need had he to exaggerate his stature? He took after his Italian ancestors: his nature was complex: great men, a very small family on earth, can unfortunately find no one but themselves to imitate them. At once a...
