Francophone literature

Nausea

by Jean-Paul Sartre, Richard Howard & James Wood

Sartre's greatest novel - and existentialism's key text - now introduced by James Wood.

Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary...

The Lost Sailors

by Jean-Claude Izzo

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA

A Sun for the Dying

by Jean-Claude Izzo & Howard Curtis

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA

Bitter Almonds

by Laurence Cossé

Edith can hardly believe it when she learns that Fadila, her sixty-year-old housemaid, is completely illiterate. How can a person living in Paris in the third millennium possibly survive without knowing how...

The Strange Journey of Mr. Daldry

by Marc Levy & Chris Murray

Alice is a “nose”—a creator of perfumes. She is passionate about her work and her only distraction from her job is her motley group of friends, who convene for late night soirees in her apartment—much...

And the Birds Rained Down

by Jocelyne Saucier & Rhonda Mullins

An award-winning and haunting meditation on aging and self-determination.

Where Tigers Are at Home

by Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès & Mike Mitchell

Winner of the Prix Médicis, this multifaceted literary novel follows the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher across 17th century Europe and Eleazard von Wogau, a retired French correspondent, through modern Brazil....

Life Form

by Amelie Nothomb

One morning, Nothomb receives a letter from one of her readers, am American soldier called Melvin Mapple, who is fighting in Iraq. Horrified by the endless violence around him, he takes comfort in over-eating....

The Threads of the Heart

by Carole Martinez

They say Frasquita knows magic, that she is a healer with occult powers, that perhaps she is a sorcerer. She does indeed posses a remarkable gift, one that has been passed down to the women in her family for...

A Very Profitable War

by Didier Daeninckx & Sarah Martin

A rollicking noir set in Paris, during the anarchic days following World War One

In January 1920, in the aftermath of “the war to end all wars,” private detective René Griffon is hired to investigate the...

The Ingredients of Love

by Nicolas Barreau

A charming restaurant

A book and its mysterious author

A little secret

A romantic meeting

Paris and all its magic . . .

Cyrano de Bergerac meets Chocolat and Amélie in this intelligent, charming, and entertaining...

The New Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor

by Salim Bachi & Sue Rose

Salim Bachi's The New Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor offers a new perspective on the Western and Arabic worlds through the eyes of an Algerian writer who straddles East and West, and an allegory for pre Arab...

Ru: A Novel

by Kim Thuy

At ten years old, Kim Thúy fled Vietnam on a boat with her family, leaving behind a grand house and the many less tangible riches of their home country: the ponds of lotus blossoms, the songs of soup-vendors....

The First Night

by Marc Levy

"The legend goes that when you are in your mother's womb, you know all about the mystery of creation, the origins of the world until the end of time. When you are born, a messenger flies over your cradle and...

The Confidant: A Novel

by Hélène Gremillon & Alison Anderson

"A gripping first novel" (Le Figaro Littéraire) and an award-winning international sensation as haunting and unforgettable as Suite Française

Paris, 1975. Camille sifts through letters of condolence after...

Murder In Memoriam

by Didier Daeninckx & Liz Heron

On the evening of October 17, 1961 twenty-thousand Algerians marched in Paris in defiance of and in protest against a curfew imposed by Maurice Papon, chief of the Paris Metropolitan Police. The protesters were...

The Phantom of the Opera

by Gaston Leroux

Christine is a beautiful young singer at the Paris Opera. She is watched by the Opera's 'phantom' - a mysterious masked figure who terrorises the Opera's management and players. With the Phantom's help, Christine...

The First Day

by Marc Levy

Keira is a passionate and ambitious archaeologist leading her first dig in the isolated Omo Valley in Ethiopia. When a sand storm destroys the site, she has no choice but to abandon her field work and go home:...

Kamouraska

by Anne Hebert & Noah Richler

A classic of Canadian literature by the great Quebecoise writer, Kamouraska is based on a real nineteenth-century love-triangle in rural Quebec. It paints a poetic and terrifying tableau of the life of Elisabeth...

The Hockey Sweater and Other Stories

by Roch Carrier, Sheila Fischman & Dave Bidini

The Hockey Sweater, the title story in this 20-story collection, has become an enduring classic: a Quebec boy and Habs fan is shipped a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater by mistake. It encapsulates everything you...