#french-literature

#french-literature

Tomb for 500,000 Soldiers-first scrawled on loose scraps, over three months, while in solitary confinement during the Algerian War for "morally corrupting" his fellow French conscripts-there is the brute fact of the text itself: a monstrous catalog of violence and sexual obscenity set during a colonial war in a thinly veiled Algeria (called Ecbatana) that unspools over 400 breathless, largely plotless pages into an apocalyptic prophecy, as immersive as it is unsparing.

France's 'cultural canon' includes a range of classic novels which most French people will have read (or watched the movie, or at least heard of) and which are therefore often referenced. Aurore Laborie lists the must-reads. First the caveat, there isn't an official list that makes up the French cultural canon when it comes to literature - but there are various lists of the most famous, many of which are on the school syllabus.

One of the best bookstores in all of NYC, Albertine Books on the Upper East Side came in at a handsome No. 9 on this year's global rankings, joining fellow beauties like Shakespeare and Company in Paris (at No. 2), El Ateneo Grand Splendid in Buenos Aires (No. 3), The Gently Mad Bookshop in Edinburgh (No. 4) and the first-place finisher, Boekhandel Dominicanen in Maastricht, Netherlands.