XCiTés: The Flamingo Book of Fresh French Writing

by Georgiade Chamberet (Editor)

• Used

  Paperback
  1999

  $3.29

  Ah, la belle France - Brie and baguettes, cafes and calvados, Sartre and Satie, easy existentialism and casual infidelity, Matisse and merlot, chateaux and chic little poodles. Certainly, that's still part of what France is about, but it's by no means the whole story any more. Rather as Britain did in the 1980s, France has in the 1990s seemingly begun to accept and analyse, rather than resist and deny, the irrefutable fact that it is now a bubbling bouillabaisse of cultures, attitudes, faiths, languages and traditions - the increasing confidence of the beurs and all the children of immigrants has begun to make its mark culturally. France now puts out some credibly cool and interesting pop music; its World Cup-winning national football team now has more exotically surnamed, fantastically loose-limbed players than any other; its film directors are getting less cerebral and more visceral (viz Kassovitz's La Haine ); all the great theoreticians have been toppled from their pedestals and a political philosopher is the last thing any self-respecting young French thing wants to be. All this alteration is being reflected and refracted in French literature, which has woken from decades of barren formalism to new life. Here are the rising young stars of French literature, from the brutal post-feminism of Virginie Despentes via the brutally perpendicular tendencies of Michel Houllebecq to the noir thrills of Tonino Benaquista.

• Used

  Paperback
  2000

  $3.29

  Ah, la belle France - Brie and baguettes, cafes and calvados, Sartre and Satie, easy existentialism and casual infidelity, Matisse and merlot, chateaux and chic little poodles. Certainly, that's still part of what France is about, but it's by no means the whole story any more. Rather as Britain did in the 1980s, France has in the 1990s seemingly begun to accept and analyze, rather than resist and deny, the irrefutable fact that it is now a bubbling bouillabaisse of cultures, attitudes, faiths, languages and traditions - the increasing confidence of the beurs and all the children of immigrants has begun to make its mark culturally. France now puts out some credibly cool and interesting pop music; its World Cup-winning national football team now has more exotically surnamed, fantastically loose-limbed players than any other; its film directors are getting less cerebral and more visceral (viz Kassovitz's La Haine ); all the great theoreticians have been toppled from their pedestals and a political philosopher is the last thing any self-respecting young French thing wants to be. All this alteration is being reflected and refracted in French literature, which has woken from decades of barren formalism to new life. Here are the rising young stars of French literature, from the brutal post-feminism of Virginie Despentes via the brutally perpendicular tendencies of Michel Houllebecq to the noir thrills of Tonino Benaquista.