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I'm looking for good French Books.

R

Rogue

New Member
I just did a little search on the net for good French Books but it left me pretty much clueless.
I just can't tell which ones are the really good ones and which ones are just crap.

So do any of you know any good ones?

The only criteria is that these books have been first published in French. It doesn't matter if they are from Canada, France or any other country.

I would love to read some good classics as well as modern books.

I'm open for suggestions.
 
I'm not really up to date on contemporary authors, but I've enjoyed reading Alexandre Dumas père and Albert Camus.

For more classics, you might want to give à la lettre a go.
 
Also, from another thread:

Rigana said:
French:
'Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of Coran' by Erich-Emmanuel Schmitt
'Oscar and the Lady in Pink' by Erich-Emmanuel Schmitt
Short and easy reads, but thought-provoking and full of warmth.

'The Book of proper names' by Amelié Nothomb - Her books are witty and so evil. My favourite is 'L'hygiene d'assassin', but it hasn't been translated into English.

'The girl who played Go' by Shan Sa
Click to expand...
 
Classics - Where do I start? There are just so many: Stendhal, Hugo, Balzac, Maupassant, Camus and a very long etcetera.

Modern- Thrillers by Tonino Benacquista and Jean Echenoz;
Historical - Amin Maalouf's Le périple de Baldassare
General - Any by Andrée Chedid
 
"Les filles de Caleb: Le chant du coq" is a great book by Arlette Cousture. It is the life story of the author's grandmother, a school teacher in Quebec in the early 1900s. It is both heartbreaking and wonderful. Nothing I could say about it could do it justice - it's the best book I've ever read.

Alexandre Dumas is really good as well. If you can, you should track down a copy of "Robin le proscrit". It is the best version of Robin Hood's story I ever read. I cried when it ended. :(

I love Jules Verne's books. "20000 Lieues sous les mer" took me a whole summer, but it was well worth the read.

Molliere's comedies are fun, but I definitely needed a dictionary to help me get the full meaning of some of his plays.
 
Thank you, Clueless! I completely forgot about Guy de Maupassant. His short stories are so chilling and well written. You should definitely add him to your "must-read" list.
 
Rogue said:
I just did a little search on the net for good French Books but it left me pretty much clueless.
I just can't tell which ones are the really good ones and which ones are just crap.

So do any of you know any good ones?

The only criteria is that these books have been first published in French. It doesn't matter if they are from Canada, France or any other country.

I would love to read some good classics as well as modern books.

I'm open for suggestions.
Click to expand...


Some classics that I have read and enjoyed a lot:

**JEAN-CHRISTOPHE by Romain Rolland

**Á LA RECHERCHE DU TEMPS PERDU ( or Remembrance of Things Past) by Marcel Proust

**Nana by Emile Zola,

**The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Hugo victor

I read the translated version, but I was pretty sure the original French version would be hard to be dissapointing.

and Honoré de Balzac!!! almost forgot him.

oh, by the way, would someone/anyone please give clues of some good Belgian writers' books??
 
'Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress' by Dai Sijie. I think Ell recommended it somewhere, too. The author is originnally Chinese, but the book was written in French.
 
I was actually going to post the same question. Now all I have to do is make a list of the recommendations. :)
 
I, like many others, recommend Alexandre Dumas, but I recommend The Count of Monte Cristo. It was a really good book, way better than the movie. I would also suggest Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. A lot of people suggest Balzac, but I didn't like him read I read him. I read Old Goriot and i wasn't really all that impressed...but you may or may like it.
 
Hey Rogue,
I read "Oscar and the Lady in Pink" by Schmitt yesterday, and didn't like it much, so I wouldn't recommend it. It sounded nice and all from what I had read about it, but it was just silly. It's about a boy who has 12 days left to live because of cancer (leukaemia), and he uses those 12 days to write letters to god. Funny at times, but still not my thing. You can give it a try though if you find it interesting, and it's not that many pages so I think you'll get through it in less than 2 hours.

If you know French you should give Cécile Beauvoir a try. She has written "Envie d'amour", it consists of 12 short-stories. I read a Norwegian translation of one of them in a "paper", (they aren't really translated into English or any other language for what I know).

I've read Balzac's "Eugine Grandet" which I liked very much, a little "heavy" read, but should absolutely be given a try. Well-written.

I find Dumas to be a bit too "simple", so I wouldn't recommend him.

I've heard Alain Robbe-Grillet to be a great writer, but haven't read anything by him yet...

Hope this was a little helpful.
 
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