Best 20th Century French authors

I'm expanding my knowledge on Frendh literature, and I was wondering which French authors I SHOULD read. Any tips?

20th century-wise, I'd nominate:

Marguerite Duras
Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Colette
Romain Gary
A case could be made that Samuel Beckett counts.

And I suppose I'm duty-bound to mention Marcel Proust.

The only really "modern" French author I've read lately is Michel Houellebecq, and while I liked him a lot, his stuff is pretty polarizing.

Sorry about all the bad touchstones.

Colette - for gender issues (similar to V. Woolf's work);
Daniel Pennac - for humour;
Georges Simenon - for 'noir' stories;
Jean-Paul Sartre - for philosophy;
Marcel Pagnol - for a Southern French style of writing;
Aime Cesaire - for a post-colonialist perspective;
Tahar Ben Jelloun - for a North-African immigration perspective;
Albert Camus - for utopian post-modernist visions of French society;
Amelie Nothomb - for a French/Belgian perspective in Japan + fiction;
Christian Jacq - for an archeological perspective on ancient Egypt and free-masonry (novels, biographies and essays).

Not a personal favorite of mine, but a modern classic anyway : André Malraux.

Guy de Maupassant, short stories and novels Bel Ami, 19th century.
Emile Zola, 19th Century

There's not a great deal of modern stuff here, so how about some recent Prix Goncourt winners:

2008 Atiq Rahimi – Syngué Sabour
2007 Gilles Leroy – Alabama Song
2006 Jonathan Littell – Les Bienveillantes
2005 François Weyergans – Trois jours chez ma mère
2004 Laurent Gaudé – Le soleil des Scorta
2003 Jacques-Pierre Amette – La maîtresse de Brecht
2002 Pascal Quignard – Les ombres errantes
2001 Jean-Christophe Rufin – Rouge Brésil
2000 Jean-Jacques Schuhl – Ingrid Caven
1999 Jean Echenoz – Je m'en vais

#6> I like your list, Tony. I'd definitely recommend Echenoz: he's a very entertaining writer with a distinctive style. Other contemporary writers I like include Annie Ernaux, Patrick Modiano, Lydie Salvayre, Marie Darrieussecq, Marie Redonnet, Jacques Roubaud, and Michel Tournier. I'm not especially keen on Sylvie Germain but I do have friends who really like her work, so I'll list her here.

Colette, Duras, Camus, and Celine are certainly musts but some very big names are still missing:

Alain-Fournier
André Gide (Nobel Prize 1947)
Marguerite Yourcenar
Jean Cocteau
Raymond Queneau
Louis Aragon
Elsa Triolet (the first woman to win the Prix Goncourt)
Michel Leiris
François Mauriac (Nobel Prize 1952)
Georges Bernanos
Jean Giono
Simone de Beauvoir

Lesser known writers still well worth seeking out (in fact, I personally like these a lot more than Mauriac or Giono) include:

René Crevel
Violette Leduc
Julien Gracq
René Daumal
Emmanuel Bove
Boris Vian

And then, of course, there are the poets like Guillaume Apollinaire, André Breton, Robert Desnos, Paul Éluard, René Char, Jacques Prévert, and Max Jacob and great essayists like Roland Barthes and Georges Bataille.

#7> Yes, marietherese, I like these additions of yours, especially Gracq and Vian.

And I'm pleased to see you added Beauvoir to the previously mentioned Sartre: personally, I find her novels far more interesting.

Now, you mention Roubaud and Queneau, but no Georges Perec?

And moving away from France itself, how about Léopold Sédar Senghor for another poet?

#8> Tony, I think de Beauvoir was simply a much better writer overall than Sartre. Her memoirs are classics and I really enjoy the novels too, more now that I'm older and wiser than I did as a youth.

Ah, I didn't mention Perec because I thought I saw him listed in a post above mine, but you're right, he's not there! Terrible omission-he was a major, hugely inventive writer and a must read.

Senghor is a very good choice. Not currently as well known as Césaire perhaps, but he was an important poet, as well as the first African elected to the Académie Française.

Yves Bonnefoy is another poet that should probably go on the list. And I don't think anyone has yet mentioned Blaise Cendrars

#9> Yes, marietherese, I agree with you about Beauvoir, although I think she’s far more remembered as the author of Le Deuxième sexe, which is a very impressive feminist take on Sartre’s work. (But only if read in the original French, of course, as opposed to the unspeakable Parshley translation.)

I suggest the following should also be on the list:

J. M. G. Le Clézio
Pierre Michon
Albert Cohen
Claude Simon
Philippe Sollers
Michel Butor

OK with all these names, but I think that Jean Genet is missing.

Here's my list to add:

Jean Anouilh (mostly theatre)
Marcel Aymé
Hervé Bazin
Frédéric Dard (mostly known under his pseudonyme San-Antonio, he wrote some great stuff under his real name)
Joseph Kessel
Françoise Sagan
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt

Marguerite Yourcenar, L'Oeuvre au Noir.
Camus, of course.
Simone de Beauvoir
Gide
Pagnol
Andre Maurois
Malraux
Amelie Nothomb
Marcel Ayme
Albert Cohen
Nathalie Sarraute
E.M. Cioran
Romain Gary
Ionesco

Emil M. Cioran (Syllogismes de l'amertume) - 2011 would have been his 100th birthday - He wasn't French, however, but wrote in French
Julien Gracq (Le Rivage des Syrtes / The opposing Shore) - the best written book I've ever read in French
Jacques Yonnet (Rue des Maléfices) - a song of love to Paris and his underground
Roland C. Wagner (La Balle du Néant) - SF/police literature
Alex Jestaire (Tourville) - delirious and funny blind race toward the apocalypse
Guy Sajer (Le Soldat Oublié) - a hard, first-hand, testimony of a young soldier during WWII
Albert Londres (Tour de France, tour de souffrance) - Albert Londres was one of the greatest French journalist.
Pierre Desproges (Textes de scène) - The best French comic.

some great names on these lists. i interviewed cioran once. romanian-american author gabriel popa interviewed me about my afternoon with him recently, it's on her blog: http://therighttopublish.blogspot.com/2010/11/most-agreeable-of-executioners-ste...

i also interviewed patrick modiano. i believe he's a giant of world literature but his oeuvre won't be recognized for what it is (it's phenomenal but you have follow it from the beginning to appreciate its arc) for a while.

my two favorites on the lists above: celine (for voyage au bout de la nuit) and bove (for mes amis and armand)

some names i didn't see listed yet that belong here:

michel tournier and jean genet.

SteveSilkin, I agree with you on Modiano. He's a remarkable but sadly under-appreciated writer. I did mention Tournier (a brilliant writer) in #7 but could not get his name to touchstone.

Thanks for the link to the interview. I very much enjoyed reading it!

15

I would love to add so many more, but my list would be too long!! :-)

I am new in LT as a reader and a writer...

This will probably sound extremely pretentious but may I suggest my own novels which I am starting publishing since last year. I have written novels since I was a kid ( I am 49 now) while pursuing my own career in the human rights field. This I have done by writing during the night regularly and consistently. Last year, I realized I had lost two of my novels and decided to create my own site (www.erictistounet.com), post the remaining novels on various self-publishing sites and seek publishers.

A small publishing house (Petits tirages) published 'un lent glissement' in January and another one (Edilivre) 'toutes les vies que j'ai vécues. The latter is available at ibookstore. A third and fourth one will be published by Editions Kirographaires this fall 'danser avec des ombres' and six months later 'celui qui reste'.

I have also posted three other novels and a compilation of chronicles from my blogs on Kindle.

I hope you will not find this post overly arrogant but since I do not (yet) have an agent I am trying to shed light on my work in this manner. Otherwise, don't hesitate to disregard it.

cheers, eric

tistounet

You will find that the best place to advertise your work is the group called 'HobNob with authors'. By advertising your work in other forums (or this one) you might find that people do not want to be approached this way, so it would be better to go to 'HobNob with authors'.

Thx for this advice which i will follow and sorry for my earlier annoying message.

No problem! Because a lot of authors tend to advertise their work all over the site and most forums, it is best to have a 'meeting' point for such things.

marietherese, have you read modiano's 'de si braves garcons' ...?

Alain-Fournier - Le Grand Meaulnes
Julien Gracq - Au Chateau d'Argol, etc.
Antonin Artaud
Pierre Klossowski
Victor Segalen - Rene Leys
Marcel Proust
Samuel Beckett
Margueritte Yourcenar
Robert Desnos
Guillaume Apollinaire
Francois Augieras: L'Apprenti sorcier
Paul Valery: Monsieur Teste, etc.
Michel de Ghelderode - L'Escurial, etc.
Jean Ray: Malpertuis

I don't know about best, but I'm surprised no one has mentioned Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. His The Little Prince is world famous, but he's also written other books that are critically acclaimed. (Although I haven't read them so I can't vouch for them....)

I think Giraudoux is definitely missing in the list (in a 20th Century perspective).

Let's make it simple :

Louis-Ferdinand Céline.
Albert Camus.
Michel Houellebecq.

That's the SHOULD-READ trio, from a french perspective.

All very respectable authors. Now try Muriel Barbery.

I think that there are a _LOT_ of writers that are more important to the long history of French literature than Houellebecq...
From Alexandre Dumas to Victor Hugo, from Baudelaire to Villon, from Zola to Gracq, etc. Compared to all the giants that French literature has, Houellebecq is but an anecdote.

>28 greuh: Seconded!

If we have to keep to the 20th century, I'd go for the following authors:

Georges Perec, as already recommended by tonyshaw14 and marietherese. La vie mode d'emploi/Life: A User's Manual is a great slice of Parisian life.

Raymond Queneau. People usually choose Zazie dans le métro. It's a great book, but my favourite is Les fleurs bleues/The Blue Flowers. If you like Italo Calvino, you'll probably like it.

I have a soft spot for Pascal Quignard. Tous les matins du monde/All the World's Mornings is probably his best-known work, as well as the most accessible.

For French writers outside the "White, Middle-Class, Middle-Aged Male" Bubble:

Marie Ndiaye Trois femmes puissantes/Three Strong Women

Maryse Condé (Le coeur à rire et à pleurer : souvenirs de mon enfance/Tales from the Heart: True Stories from My Childhood

Joseph Zobel Black Shack Alley/La rue Cases-Nègres

Aimé Césaire Notebook of a Return to the Native Land/Cahier d'un retour au pays natal

Are you looking for French authors specifically, or for authors who write in French? If it's the latter, I have a long list of recommendations for Algerian, Canadian, Haitian, Ivorian, etc. writers!

#29 - Thank you for this wonderful post! I recently discovered Condé and Ndiaye: they were both a revelation. I'm a big proponent of the Francophonie being French living in Canada - there is such a rich corpus of accents and experiences to be gained from French-speaking writers from around the world.

I second Cecilturtle's thanks, Dilara86. That was a great list.

If you have the time and inclination I would love to read your list of recommended "Algerian, Canadian, Haitian, Ivorian, etc. writers". I am always on the search for diverse voices and I have the feeling you could lead me to some genuinely intriguing authors and books.

>30 Cecilturtle: Can you recommend some Canadian authors/books? I must say I haven't read much French Canadian literature, apart from the ubiquitous Maria Chapdelaine, but I'd love to know more. However, I do have one name that ticks all sorts of boxes as far as "francophonie" is concerned - including the French Canadian one - and that’s Dany Laferrière. He’s originally from Haiti, and lives in Montreal. L’énigme du retour is a beautiful and poignant book about exile, roots, and family, about the author’s Haitian past, and about the Haiti of today. It is one of my favourite reads this year, although it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, as it is written partly in verse. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have been translated into English yet, unlike his other novels, such as Vers le Sud/Heading South, a book about North American female sex tourists in Haiti which was turned into a film.

Cheikh Amadou Hampâté Bâ is an important Malian author. I really enjoyed his childhood memoirs Amkoullel, l’enfant peul. I couldn’t get into L’étrange destin de Wangrin/The Fortunes of Wangrin, but that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t… Talking of memoirs, if you’re looking for a light, pleasant read about a West African (Guinean) semi-idealised childhood, try Camara Laye’s L’enfant noir/The Dark Child.

Aminata Sow Fall is the Grande Dame of Senegalese literature. I’ve only read some of her non-fiction, and therefore cannot give personal recommendations as far as her novels are concerned, but L’Appel des arènes and La Grève des bàttu/The Beggars' Strike are classics.

On the subject of classics, L'Aventure ambiguë/Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh-Hamidou Kane (Senegal) and Les Soleils des indépendances/The Suns of Independence by Ahmadou Kourouma (Ivory Coast) are must-reads for anyone even vaguely interested in post-colonial studies.

Une si longue lettre/So long a letter by Mariama Bâ is a ground-breaking African (Senegalese) novel about the condition of women in a traditional polygamous West African culture. It’s quite a short read, and it really opened my eyes when I read it as a teenager...

That’s it for now. I’ll be back in a bit with recommendations for North African / Middle Eastern literature. And I've just realised I don't know anything about French Asian literature (from Vietnam, Pondicherry, etc.) unless Marguerite Duras counts. I'd be really grateful for pointers from someone better-read than I am...

Merci!
Here is a diverse glimpse at Canada's Francophone contribution:
In the classics, we have Manitoban Gabrielle Roy with her very well-known Bonheur d'occasion although I will also recommend her short stories which are mostly biographical and also speak of First Nations in La petite poule d'eau and La rivière sans repos.

Antonine Maillet put Acadian on the map (New Brunswick) with La sagouine. I admit though the language is so different I had a really hard time reading it and never managed to finish it...
In terms of accents, Michel Tremblay legitimized joual, the Montreal slang. I loved C't'à ton tour, Laura Cadieux, but you have to almost be bilingual French-English!

I personally love Nancy Houston; she's from Alberta but writes in French and then translates into English. A beautiful book about the prairies is Le cantique des plaines.

More modern is Marie Laberge who wrote a great saga which starts from WWI to today in Le goût du bonheur; Réjean Ducharme with his wild prose L'avalée des avalées (very stark) and Jacques Poulin Les grandes marées which is all about the poetry of vast expanses.

Finally, Canada is about immigration and welcoming people from all over the world. Lately, Kim Thuy told of her experience as an immigrant Vietnam in Ru and Aki Shimazaki tells of her native Japan in Tsubaki (one of a 5-part series of novellas).

I could go on and on, but these are some of my favorites!