The BBC News website has just published an article about how few modern French novelists are known in the Anglo-Saxon world. Readers were asked to propose their favourites and today we have the follow-up where 10 French authors are highlighted.
This has made me aware of my regrettable complete ignorance in this area and I wondered whether SFN members had their own recommendations. Clearly most people would prefer English translations, but perhaps some suggestions suitable for those with French as a deuxième langue would also be helpful.
Maupassant, Camus, Cocteau, Fournier, Pagnol, Saint-Exupery, Colette, Sartre.
Claude Michelet; Henri Vincenot. Not terribly cutting edge and modern but at least get into the second half of the twentieth century and fairly easy reading.
Bernard Werber, Author of the 'Empire of the ants', apparently the only book of his translated in English. I find him a wonderful writer, even makes French not sounds so pompous. His latest book is 'Les Micro-Humains' (2013) follow up from 'Le Pere de nos Peres' and 'Troisieme Humanite' sort of science/fantasy/fiction.
I just read 'Les Thanathonautes' a very good story a bit mired in encyclopedic knowledge about death beliefs. I did not check if his quotations were real or invented.
Amelie Nothomb is wonderful…although Belgian!
Michel Houellebecq: "La carte et la territoire" (A difficult father-son relationship, a career in arts mixed with a passionate love story and the gruesome murder of Houllebecq) and "La possibilité d'une île" (A representative of the future mankind looks back by means of his earlier alter-egos)
Albert Camus: "La peste"