French literature
Bernard-Henri Lévy’s Lady-Lacking Reading List
What, then, do we do with this?
Interpreting the Holocaust Dreams of Literary Puzzle Master Georges Perec
Georges Perec was a founder of the so-called OULIPO movement. The publication of “La Boutique Obscure” represents a growing interest in his work.
Frédéric Chouraki's Yom Kippur Comedy
France’s Frédéric Chouraki is one of Europe’s most frivolous and insouciant young Jewish novelists. Chouraki’s 2008 “Ginsberg and Me” (“Ginsberg et moi”), from Les Éditions du Seuil, is a fictional jape about Simon Glückmann, an observant young French Jew who meets and seduces the elderly American poet Allen Ginsberg in a Paris gay sauna. Hijinks ensue, with Ginsberg depicted in the unflattering guise, as one reviewer put it, of a “libidinous old goat.”
Bernard Frank: France’s Much-Missed Literary Wit
In 2006, when the French Jewish author Bernard Frank dropped dead of a heart attack while dining with a cardiologist friend at a fancy Paris restaurant, readers felt it was a fitting end for this waspish gourmet with a fine talent for conviviality.
Patrick Modiano: Writing and Rewriting Recent Jewish History
On June 9, French novelist Patrick Modiano will receive a prestigious literary prize from the Fondation Simone et Cino del Duca, previously given to Jean Anouilh, Jorge Luis Borges, and Milan Kundera.