The French love to talk, but most of all, they love to write books.
Let’s face it, French literature is too vast to be summed up in a top 10 list. Centuries of French authors and mountains of books make this list far from exhaustive, but these 10 books can be a good start for English readers who want to understand the French.
Here is our selection, a subjective choice in a subjective order:
1. “The Plague”
By Albert Camus
Published by Vintage International (1991)
Under the strain of the global pandemic, this haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of the disease became once again a best-seller in France.
Albert Camus’s iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine when the disease hits the town.
Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek to blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror.
“The Plague” is an allegory of France under the Nazi occupation and a timeless story of bravery and determination, the story that — surprisingly — also fits well in our modern times.
2. “La Comedie Humaine”
By Honore de Balzac
Published by Benediction Classics (2013)
“La Comedie Humaine” is not one book, it’s a wide panorama of French society after the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815.
This massive collection of stories, novels and essays follows the arch story of characters moved by ambition in the unforgiving society of France’s 19th century. It grasps every aspect of this society and reaches for the soul of what drives women and men through life in these hard times.
3. “The Red and the Black”
By Stendhal
Published by Penguin Classics (2002)
“The Red and the Black” tells the story of the ambitious Julien Sorel determined to rise above his humble provincial origins to the cost of himself.
It is also a lively, satirical portrayal of the French society after the Waterloo defeat, riddled with corruption, greed, and French “ennui,” an attitude and way of life Julien perfectly embodies.
4. “Aurelia”
By Gerard de Nerval
Published by Exact Change (2004)
“Aurelia” is de Nerval’s account of his descent into madness through poetry, which gives birth to sparks of literary beauty even English can convey.
“After a few minutes’ lethargy, a new life begins, untrammeled by the limitations of time and space, and undoubtedly similar to that which awaits us after death,” writes De Nerval about dreams in this opus.
Nerval was best known for parading a lobster on a pale blue ribbon through the gardens of the Palais-Royal in Paris, and was posthumously notorious for his suicide on a lamppost in 1855.
Beyond the trivia, Nerval was a fierce poet who paved the way for surrealism and contemporary poetry, making him one of the most influential poets in France.
5. “The Count of Monte Cristo”
By Alexandre Dumas
Published by Penguin Classics (2003)
One of the most popular works of Alexandre Dumas, “The Count of Monte Cristo” stands out as a timeless tale of revenge.
Thrown in prison for a crime he did not commit, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If, where he learns of a treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo.
He soon becomes the Count of Monte Cristo, determined not only to escape but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration.
6. “The Venus d’Ille”
By Prosper Merimee
Published by Hesperus Press (2004)
Best known for the story that gave birth to the famous opera “Carmen,” Merimee published “La Venus d’Ille” in 1837, a short story about a statue of Venus coming to life and bringing disasters around her.
This story is one of a kind, as it is a testament to the French fantastic genre, where supernatural entities come to meddle in the life of ordinary men.
Interestingly, Merimee was in love with Ukraine to the point of speaking Ukrainian.
He even wrote an essay about the Ukrainian Hetman Bogdan Khmelnytsky, and thanks to him, the French Senate even considered a petition to introduce the study of Ukrainian history in French schools but not to avail.
7. “Bonjour Tristesse”
by Francoise Sagan
Published by Penguin Modern Classics (2013)
Sagan’s amoral tale of adolescence and betrayal on the French Riviera was her masterpiece, published when she was just eighteen.
“Bonjour Tristesse” is a bittersweet tale narrated by Cecile, a seventeen-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood, whose meddling in her father’s love life leads to tragic consequences.
It’s a complex portrait of casual amorality and a young woman’s desperate attempt to understand and control the world around her.
8. “Under Satan’s Sun”
By George Bernanos
Published by Bison Books (2001)
This novel follows a fervent Catholic priest, a misfit in the world and in his church, who creates scandal wherever he turns.
But his insight helps him to meet a young murderess whose destiny inexorably becomes entangled with his own.
Georges Bernanos’ first novel, “Under Satan’s Sun” develops the existence of evil as a spiritual force and its dramatic role in human destiny.
9. “Pensees”
By Blaise Pascal
Published by Penguin Classics (1995)
“Pensees” is a collection of philosophical notes and essays in which Pascal explores the contradictions of human nature in psychological, social, metaphysical and theological terms.
Through the “Pensees,” mankind emerges as a wretched creature who can be transformed through faith.
Blaise Pascal was a gifted mathematician and physicist, but this work defined French philosophy for generations after.
10. “Journey to the End of the Night”
By Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Published by New Directions (2006)
Louis-Ferdinand Celine’s anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of post-war society explodes from nearly every page of this novel.
The antihero Bardamu, Celine’s avatar, takes the reader with him from the trenches of World War I to the African jungle, to New York and to Detroit to meet its own destiny in Paris, where everything began and everything finishes.
