Dilara’s Spring Reads

Dilara’s Spring Reads: April to June



This is my new thread for the new quarter. I probably won't be reading as much in the next four months: I'm expecting a busy time at work.

My Spring Reads aims are:
1) Read new SFF/speculative fiction authors writing in languages other than English - this is Reading Globally's quarterly theme.
2) Read at least one book in the original Spanish and see how I get on.
3) Read at least one book originally written in a language I haven't encountered yet.

Places I've visited so far this quarter:

• Windhoek, a fictional village in West Flanders (Belgium)
  
• Amatka, a town in a fictional world
  
• Istanbul (Turkey)
  
• Belgrade, Serbia (in 2024)
  
• Paris and Brittany (Rostrenen, Carhaix) (France)
  
• Paris (France) x3
  
• Sirius, Saturn, 18th-century Earth
  
• Barcelona (Spain)
  
• A village in Thailand
  
• Cyberland (cyberspace)
  
• North Korea
  
• Moldova
  
• Salé (Morocco)
  
• Cairo (Egypt)
  
• An equatorial island off the coast of India
  
• Quimper, Brittany (France)
  
• Majorca, Balearic island (Spain)
  
• Yaoundé (Cameroon)
  
• Milan (Italy)
  
• France (generic)
  

April reads

1. Un été sans dormir by Bram Dehouck
   
2. Amatka by Karin Tidbeck
   
3. Le sillon by Valérie Manteau
   
4. L'égout by Andrija Matić
   
5. Ton père by Christophe Honoré
   
6. Isidore et les autres by Camille Bordas
   
7. Micromégas by Voltaire
   
8. Le Mystère de la crypte ensorcelée by Eduardo Mendoza
   
9. Venin by Saneh Sangsuk
   
10. Cyberland by Li-Cam
    
11. Des amis by Nam-Ryong Baek
    
12. Des mille et une façons de quitter la Moldavie by Vladimir Lortchenkov
    
13. Un féminisme décolonial by Françoise Vergès
    
14. Celui qui est digne d'être aimé by Abdellah Taïa
    
15. Une petite vie by Khosraw Mani
    
16. La bibliothèque enchantée by Mohammad Rabie
    
17. Hayy bin Yaqzân by Ibn Tufayl
    
18. Fruits & légumes by Anthony Palou
    
19. Une famille française : Des Antilles à Dunkerque en passant par l'Algérie by Audrey Célestine
    
20. Tout ce bleu by Gaston-Paul Effa
    
    

Original languages of the books I've read this month:

• French: 9
  
• English: 1
  
• Flemish: 1
  
• Swedish: 1
  
• Serbian: 1
  
• Spanish: 1
  
• Thai: 1
  
• Korean: 1
  
• Russian: 1
  
• Dari: 1
  
• Arabic: 2
  

• Number of female authors this month: 6
  
• Number of male authors this month: 14
  
• Mixed male/female collaborations this month: 0
  

May reads

1. Numéro zéro: roman by Umberto Eco
   
2. Qu'est-ce qu'un Français ? : Histoire de la nationalité française depuis la Révolution by Patrick Weil
   
3. Le français est à nous ! by Maria Candea and Laélia Véron
   
4. Discours sur le colonialisme, suivi de : Discours sur la Négritude by Aimé Césaire
   
5. L'atome expliqué à mes petits-enfants by Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond
   
6. La septième fonction du langage by Laurent Binet
   
7. Les Métamorphoses : Extraits by Ovide
   
8. Science-fiction et société by Alexandre Hougron (unfinished)
   
9. Nous l'aimons tant, Glenda. Queremos tanto a Glenda by Julio Cortázar (unfinished)
   
10. Cuisine Actuelle de l'Afrique noire by Alexandre Bella Ola
    
11. Opium pour Ovide by Yōko Tawada
    
12. Joyeusement veggie by Camille Dides
    
13. Eat Nature - L'herbier gourmand by Anne Mæhlum
    
14. Les dieux de la steppe by Andreï Guelassimov
    
15. Je cuisine un jour bleu : Gourmets autistes, recettes et témoignages by Josef Schovanec and numerous other contributors
    
16. L'Arabe du futur - volume 4 by Riad Sattouf
    
17. Ces femmes-là by Gérard Mordillat
    
18. Dans le faisceau des vivants by Valerie Zenatti
    
19. Noire n'est pas mon métier by Aïssa Maïga, Nadège Beausson-Diagne, Mata Gabin, Maïmouna Gueye, Eye Haïdara, Rachel Khan, Sara Martins, Marie-Philomène Nga, Sabine Pakora, Firmine Richard, Sonia Rolland, Magaajyia Silberfeld, Shirley Souagnon, Assa Sylla, Karidja Touré, France Zobda
    
20. Les Grands Maîtres du Haïku by Bashô, Issa, Buson, Shiki, Taigi
    
21. Au-delà des frontières: roman by Andreï Makine
    
22. Le cinquième principe by Vittorio Catani (unfinished)
    
23. by
    
24. by
    

Original languages of the books I've read this month:

• French: 14
  
• English: 0
  
• Italian: 2
  
• Latin: 1
  
• Spanish: 1
  
• Norwegian: 1
  
• Russian: 1
  
• Japanese: 1
  

• Number of female authors this month: 6 (22 if every author of Noire n'est pas mon métier is counted individually)
  
• Number of male authors this month: 15 (19 if every author of Les Grands Maîtres du Haïku is counted individually)
  
• Mixed male/female collaborations this month: 1
  

June reads

1. Les jardins statuaires by Jacques Abeille
   
2. Thailande : Cuisine intime et gourmande by Anchalee Tiaree and Catherine Cauneille-Sukrasorn
   
3. Le Pont aux trois arches by Ismail Kadare
   
4. La Cuisine Cajun by Judith Bluysen
   
5. Nos ancêtres ne sont pas gaulois ! : Contre-histoire de France by François Durpaire
   
6. Les Noirs en Haut-Poitou au XVIIe siècle by Sébastien Jahan (This is an article, not a book)
   
7. Le mangeur de livres by Stephane Malandrin
   
8. De purs hommes by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr
   
9. Friday et Friday by Antonythasan Jesuthasan
   
10. Les métèques by Denis Lachaud
    
11. Politiques de l'inimitié by Achille Mbembe
    
12. Le jardinier d'Otchakov by Andreï Kourkov
    
13. Carnet de dessins : Les guides Voir vous présentent les plus beaux monuments du monde by Dorling Kindersley
    
14. Le Soldat et le gramophone by Saša Stanišić
    
15. Thés et mets : Subtiles alliances by Lydia Gautier
    
16. La Reine du silence by Marie Nimier
    
17. Méfiez-vous des blancs, habitants du rivage ! by Alain Badiou, with quotations from various international poets and writers
    
18. La Civilisation, ma Mère !... by Driss Chraïbi
    
19. Festins by Sabrina Ghayour
    
20. Il pleut des étoiles dans notre lit: Cinq poètes du Grand Nord by André Velter, Pentti Holapppa, Tomas Tranströmer, Jan Erik Vold, Sigurður Pálsson, Inger Christensen
    
21. Les souvenirs m'observent by Tomas Tranströmer
    

Original languages of the books I've read this month:

• French: 12
  
• English: 3
  
• Albanian: 1
  
• Tamil: 1
  
• Russian: 1
  
• German:1
  
• Swedish: 1 and 1/5
  
• Finnish: 1/5
  
• Danish: 1/5
  
• Norwegian: 1/5
  
• Icelandic: 1/5
  

• Number of female authors this month: 7
  
• Number of male authors this month: 18
  
• Mixed male/female collaborations this month: 1
  

Ton père (Your father) by Christophe Honoré





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Mostly Paris and Brittany (France)
First published in 2017


This is a fictional autobiography by Christophe Honoré (href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Honor%C3%A9), a film-maker, playwright, and YA, children’s and adult writer.
One morning, Honoré’s 10-year-old daughter comes back from the bakery to find an enigmatic note tacked to their front door. It says “Guerre et Paix : contrepèterie douteuse ?”. That’s “War and Peace: a dubious spoonerism?”, “Guerre et Paix” being a spoonerism of “père et gay” (ie, “father and gay”), which is what Honoré is. He had a child with a female friend with whom he shares parental duties: their daughter spends Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and every other Sunday with him. Cue a heart-wrenching amount of speculation on what the message means, whether it’s clever and innocent, or hostile, and whether he is in danger or not. It – and other offerings from his stalker – prompt all sorts of reflections on his past, his work, his experiences as a gay man and as a father, the gay artists who shaped him, the incredible amount of microaggressions and hostility he’s faced, and quite a bit of self-doubt. Nestled in the text are black and white photos of parts of the male body – a calf, the back of a neck, etc. – and of gay icons who died of AIDS. The only one I recognised straight off the bat without a doubt was Derek Jarman, but there are also Cyril Collard, Hervé Guibert, Jacques Demy (I didn’t even know he was gay or that he died of AIDS – to me, he was Agnès Varda’s husband), and others. It’s stylistically sophisticated and incredibly moving.

L'égout (Šaht – Manhole) by Andrija Matić, translated by Alain Cappon





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Serbian
Original language: Serbian
Translated into: French
Location: Belgrade, Serbia
First published in 2009



The story takes place in a dystopic near future, in 2024. Serbians live under a totalitarian régime that upholds Christian Orthodox and nationalist values, and rejects anything Western. It is a harsh world where people go to public executions of gay men and drug addicts (they spread AIDS, which was scarier when the novel was first published back in 2009 than it is now) for entertainment. The English language has been banned in Serbia because it is the medium of Western propaganda and decadence. Teachers, translators and students of English live on the edge of society, despised by all and unable to find any kind of job. Of course there’s one rule for the people and another for top officials, which is why our main character, a former English teacher called Bojan Radić, is asked by the head of secret service to teach English to his children. Relieved that he is able at last to earn a living, and taken in by crowd-manipulation techniques, he turns into a believer. Obviously, this does not last. He meets a HIV-positive woman and things take a dark turn.
This is a pretty run-of-the-mill dystopia in the style of 1984, but the Serbian angle was interesting. The French translation was overly formal and felt a bit off, but it was perfectly readable. I don’t think that this novel has been translated into English, despite the fact that the author’s website has an English title for it – Manhole. This is slightly surprising, given the themes and the fact that Andrija Matić teaches English literature. It has however been translated into Macedonian…

Commenting to get the updates to your thread. Such interesting things you read (even if I wouldn't want to read most of them)!

>8 Petroglyph: Thank you!

Le sillon (The furrow) by Valérie Manteau





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Istanbul (Turkey)
First published in 2018


Le sillon means “the furrow”. It is the French translation of “Agos”, which is the name of a famous Turkish-Armenian newspaper whose editor-in-chief, Hrant Dink, was assassinated in 2007 by a Turkish nationalist who disapproved of Dink’s politics (he campaigned tirelessly for the rights of the Armenian minority in Turkey). This book relates the author’s research on Hrant Dink and in parallel, the disintegration of her relationship with a Turkish man, and the collapse of Turkish democracy with the 2016 coup and Erdogan’s subsequent crackdown on the opposition. She describes a Turkey we rarely hear about, where artists, Syrian refugees and intellectuals live in edgy neighbourhoods full of bars, music shops and tattoo parlours. This is a fictional autobiography written in a stream-of-consciousness style, with minimal punctuation and indirect speech markers. It required more concentration than usual at the beginning, but once I got used to it, it was an engaging, thought-provoking read from someone with a deep love for Turkey and Turkish people.

Isidore et les autres (How to Behave in a Crowd) by Camille Bordas, translated by Camille Bordas





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: English
Translated into: French by the author herself
Location: A French town not in Ardèche but closer to Ardèche than Alsace is… Yes, I spent too much time speculating on where that could be.
First published in 2017 in English, in 2019 in French


How to Behave in a Crowd is Camille Bordas’s first novel in English. She then translated / rewrote it in French. I heard about it back in September, when the library had an event showcasing their new acquisitions from the "rentrée littéraire". The speaker’s enthusiasm drove me to put a hold on too many books, some of which I could definitely have lived without reading. This is one of these. I’m not going to present it or summarise it – there are plenty of LT reviews that do a better job of it than I ever could (it was on Early Reviewers). It’s not awful, but it’s not for me. There’s a lot of trite philosophizing from the characters (they’re nearly all geniuses) and they all have the same young, casual, intellectual voice, whether they’re twelve and not bookish, or university students, or 111 years old. Another thing that annoyed me is the way everything was pushed to the extreme limit of plausibility: the geniuses are more intelligent than anyone else and have skipped more years than the French education system could ever allow, the main character loses his virginity aged 12 to a much older girl, the elderly lady in the street is the oldest woman in the world, etc. On the plus side, it’s a quick and easy read. I just don’t understand why it’s not marketed as YA.

Enjoying all the miscellany which has continued into your new thread, even if these are books I literally can’t read. (ETA - except the one that just appeared...)

Micromégas by Voltaire





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Sirius, Saturn, Earth
First published in 1752


Micromégas is a 120,000-feet-tall space traveller from Sirius. He and his somewhat smaller Saturnian colleague discover the Earth and the strange, tiny creatures that people it. With the help of a giant hearing-trumpet and ad-hoc microscopes made of diamonds, they start to communicate with philosophers on board a ship* sailing on the Baltic. It’s all very Swiftian. Their encounters give rise to various philosophical exchanges. How do we know that a living being is intelligent? What is a soul? There are humorous digs at contemporary society, as well as the scientific or philosophical questions of his time. The take-away being that it is wise to revisit what we think we know, and to look at things from the outside and through a relativist lense. Men are not at the centre of the universe. This is the Enlightenment distilled in twenty pages.

* Probably Maupertuis’s expedition to Lapland.

>12 Dilara86: My memory is always iff, but I don’t believe I’ve ever read a review of Voltaire before...much less read him directly. Maybe I could do 20 pages. Entertained by your review.

>13 dchaikin: Please do! I'd feel less lonely... (Having said that, I've noticed that both Basswood and Raton-liseur have reviewed it.)

Le Mystère de la crypte ensorcelée (The Mystery of the Enchanted Crypt) by Eduardo Mendoza, translated by Anabel Herbout and Edgardo Cozarinsky





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Spanish
Original language: Spanish
Translated into: French
Location: Barcelona (Spain)
First published in 1979


A crime novel with gothic undertones set in Barcelona in the seventies. The author reveals the corruption hidden behind respectable fronts, in those special years sandwiched between the end of Francoism and the start of the Movida. There’s a lot of unsubtle, bawdy and dark humour. It’s not my cup of tea, particularly, but I can see its appeal. It’s available in English.

Venin (Venom) by Saneh Sangsuk, translated by Marcel Barang





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Thai
Original language: Thai
Translated into: French
Location: Thailand


I discovered Venin (nobody has entered the English version – Venom – as of today on LT, but I know it exists) by Thai author Saneh Sangsuk by chance in a charity sale. This was a lucky find first because I can at long last check the Thai box on my mental list of world literature, but more importantly, because it’s a great book. This novella describes the day of a young cripple boy and his struggle with the giant female cobra who is suffocating him. It isn’t a happy story, obviously, but it is moving and full of humanity.

Cyberland by Li-Cam





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Cyberland (Cyberspace), mostly
First published in 2017


This novel is pretty hard to summarise. The first three-quarters describe a straightforward YA RPG adventure in a virtual reality universe called Cyberland. The heroes are a diverse (ethnically and skills-wise) bunch of teenagers. There’s Louise, a German “humod”, Saïd a Moroccan maths genius (except he’s not really Moroccan – he’s a stereotypical French banlieusard of North-African origins), Lu-Pan, a Chinese boy/girl who’s good at healing (another stereotype!), iNNoKeNTi, a child cyborg, Alyson the American zealot, and ever present in the background, Ierophan.th, Cyberland’s virtual “puppeteer”. The last quarter is more philosophical (although there is some philosophy in the first part) and takes place “IRL”. It is a different beast altogether. The dialogues were great and true-to-life; the premises were interesting. The writing was natural and flowed seamlessly, with no clunkiness anywhere. I wasn’t taken by the RPG exploration gimmick, and more generally, I thought the whole concept could have been better handled. The novel would have benefitted from an experienced editor helping with its construction and execution. There were a lot of attributed quotes (Deleuze, de Gaulle (!), Mary Shelley…) and spoonfeeding of philosophical concepts. Another novel that I feel should have been marketed to older, brighter teenagers rather than adults. It wasn’t for me, but I can recognise its worth.

>14 Dilara86: Yes... I remember reading this. I am of those people who read Voltaire for pleasure. Micromégas might not be the one I prefer, but I have not read that much from him. Incidentally, your review reminds me it's been some time since I have read Voltaire or any of his kind. I might be willing to rectify this soon.

>16 Dilara86: Interesting plot. I'll have to investigate this book... Thanks!

This was my first Voltaire since Candide in secondary school! I was put off for a long time. And I now realise I was actually reacting to the teacher rather than the book and the author.

Des amis (Pŏt - Friends) by Baek, Nam-Ryong, translated by Patrick Maurus and Yang Jung-Hee





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: North Korean
Original language: Korean
Translated into: French
Location: North Korea
First published in 2011


Des amis is the first North Korean* novel ever translated into French.

Judge Jong Jin-Woo is a wise, experienced and conscientious man. He is judging whether star singer Soon-Hwi and her husband metal-worker Sok-Chun have ground for divorce. This entails a long investigation and multiple hearings from not just the couple themselves, but also from their young son, their work colleagues, their bosses and even a sixth cousin! Divorce is not a private matter between two adults who’ve grown apart: it is a rent in the social fabric that should only be allowed after careful examination. It is also an indictment on the couple themselves and on their wider social circle. The impact is far-reaching. Clearly, the assumption is that once a parent has been awarded custody of a child, this child will not be part of the other parent’s life in any way, shape or form, including financial. The feelings described (such as feeling misunderstood, despised and neglected by a spouse, difficulties juggling home and work lives, torn loyalties, etc.) are universal, but the way they are expressed and played out in society felt very alien to me, no doubt in part due to the strange, stilted French of the translation. It was all quite earnest, with very little “show” and a lot of “tell”. It is also a window on a culture very different from mine, and very much worth reading just for this reason.



* That is, from an author living in contemporary North Korea and working within the North Korean cultural industry. Obviously, pre-partition writers from the Northern regions and misery memoirs from escapees have been available for a long time.

>21 Dilara86: Again, a very interesting review, and I discover a book that might be worth reading. Thanks!

>20 Dilara86: I had the same feeling with some authors I was "forced" to read in secondary school. Fortunately, I had some good teachers and was not put off many authors. I think it happened with the authors I was too young to read, namely Flaubert. I discovered, marvelled, Madame Bovary last year or so and am happy I did not have to read it earlier. It would have spoiled a vast pleasure for me.
Back to Voltaire, I have not read that much from him, but I read Mahomet le prophète a couple of years ago. Some media were talking about it, I think the play was forbidden in Switzerland, and I wanted to make my own opinion. I really recommand reading it, it is really interesting to see Voltaire's thoughts on religion. Of course, it should not be read literally and as an attack to one religion, but as a metaphor to all religions. Voltaire being the inventor (I think) of this nice expression, "great clockmaker" to speak about a deist entity, there is a lot of food for thought in this play.
That said, I read it in the train, and I was happy to read it on my ebook (although it was not intentionnal). It felt strange to be glad to hide the title of the book I was reading...

I haven’t checked out Voltaire yet, but noting your review of Venin. And, while I don’t want to spend time reading it, I was very interested in your comments on the North Korean novel (Friends?).

>22 raton-liseur: He. I studied Madame Bovary twice: first for the baccalaureate, then at university. Although at university, we didn't study it through the usual literary lense: we just looked at the grammatical devices Flaubert used, including the way he plays with passé simple, passé composé and imparfait tenses. It sounds really dry and boring, but I really enjoyed it! In case you couldn't tell, I love linguistics.



Une petite vie (A small life) by Khosraw Mani, translated by Khojesta Ebrahimi and Marie Vrinat-Nikolov





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Afghan
Original language: Dari (Afghan Persian)
Translated into: French
Location: Unspecified
First published in 2014 (2018 for the French translation)



Une petite vie is a slim novel originally written in Dari, the version of Persian spoken in Afghanistan, by journalist and writer in exile Khosraw Mani. He is a major name in Afghanistan’s contemporary cultural landscape, and this book is his third novel. His is working on his first English novel, which if it comes to fruition, might improve his notoriety in the Western world.

Une petite vie’s enigmatic, surreal story is slowly given shape, short chapter after short chapter (from 5 lines to a couple of pages long), glimpse after glimpse, tableau after tableau (it is a very visual novel). The first character we meet is called Alef, which is surely a nod to The Aleph, although I read it so long ago I certainly can’t go into specifics. In their very informative postface, the translators tell us that the text is full of references to Persian literature and myths, including the Conference of the Birds. They went over my head, unfortunately. I enjoyed the poetic writing very much, but this is a book that would definitely benefit from a second reading. My plan is to buff up on Persian and Afghan culture - Attar has been on my To-Read list for a long time, and I’d read anything else translated by Khojesta Ebrahimi and Marie Vrinat-Nikolov with pleasure – then read Une petite vie again.

Des mille et une façons de quitter la Moldavie (The Good Life Elsewhere) by Vladimir Lortchenkov, translated by Raphaëlle Pache





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Moldovan
Original language: Russian
Translated into: French
Location: Moldova
First published in 2008


The Good Life Elsewhere (it is available in English!) is a satirical and slightly surreal look at Moldova, and at the efforts expanded by the inhabitants of one village to get to their new Promised Land: Italy.

Hayy bin Yaqzân (Philosophus Autodidactus – The Improvement of Human Reason, exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan – Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale: there are so many alternate titles!) by Ibn Tufayl, translated by Léon Gauthier





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Al-Andalus, 12th century
Original language: Arabic
Translated into: French
Location: an equatorial island off the Indian coast
Written in the 12th century.


I was reading La bibliothèque enchantée (The enchanted library) by Mohammad Rabie last Saturday. Hayy bin Yaqzân is mentioned and seems to have a central symbolic place in this novel. It became obvious that to get more than a surface understanding of the text, I would have to read Hayy bin Yaqzân. Fortunately, my local library has it! I walked over, found it without too much difficulty (It wasn’t in the Fiction section or on the Arabic shelf, but on the General Philosophy shelf. Third time lucky!), and started reading. I’m glad that I did.

It is the first philosophical novel in Arabic (or first ever in all languages according to some sources, but I’ve seen so many different contenders for the first novel accolade I tend to take them with a pinch of salt). In any case, it was first translated into Latin and English in the early 18th century and inspired Daniel Defoe and Voltaire, among others. After the rather dry and formal introduction, the story proper starts with two parallel first chapters. The first possible start to the story is that as a newborn, the main protagonist, called Hayy bin Yaqzân, was placed in a box that was left to drift on the sea until it came ashore a desert island. Or alternately, he is the result of spontaneous generation on the very same island, through the action of heat and gases on clay. The reader is free to go for the origin story that suits them. This postmodern “choose your own adventure” start made me extraordinarily happy.
The first part of the book describes Hayy bin Yaqzân’s intellectual growth and his efforts at making sense of the world around him all by himself, after the gazelle who raises him dies (he then dissects her, of course!) Think Greek/medieval science mini-treatises about the physical world (the human body, plants, animals, the sky, etc.), culminating with his discovery of the Divine. The second part focuses on how to be a good person and how to feel close to the Divine. Towards the end, another person, would-be mystic and hermit Açal, arrives on the island. Their interractions and their attempts at guiding others onto the right path are described. The mystical side of the book is similar to other mystical works. It’s not a million miles from Saint Theresa’s The Interior Castle, for example.
I thought the novel had a lot in common with Enlightenment era works, especially Voltaires’s tales and Rousseau’s natural religion concept. Academics have also pointed out platonic and aristotelian themes. These went over my head because I have next to no classical culture, but of course Ibn Tufayl, as a medieval man of science living in Al-Andalus, would have been familiar with both Plato and Aristotle.

This is one of those books that I should have known about because it’s a classic, but somehow didn’t. The 19th century French translation was very readable – simple, straightforward and not too dated. I feel lucky that I found out about it and that I was able to borrow it from my small, local library.

>26 Dilara86: Interesting... I had never heard about it either. Thanks for the review and for expanding my horizons!

>26 Dilara86: enjoyed your review

>12 Dilara86: re: Micromegas - Never heard of it, now I want to read it :)

La bibliothèque enchantée (Kawkab ‘Anbar – The enchanted library) by Mohammad Rabie, translated by Stéphanie Dujols





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Egyptian
Original language: Arabic
Translated into: French
Location: Cairo (Egypt)
First published in 2010 (French translation: 2019)


Chaher is a passionate reader who works as a pen-pusher for the Egyptian civil service. He is sent to assess the Kawkab Ambar library and write a report whose conclusion is foregone: it has to go to make place for the metro. Sayyid is an academic and man of leisure who spends all his time in the library and acts as its self-appointed guardian. The novel alternates between their two points of view, as Sayyid takes Chaher under his wing and fancies himself the Hayy ibn Yaqzan to Chaher’s Açar.
The library was built by a rich Cairene for his wife, former corn hawker Kawkab Ambar, who did not care for money, fashion or other earthly interests, but loved books, poetry and the pursuit of knowledge (a woman after my own heart!) It is out of the beaten path and visited by a small group of middle-aged or elderly regulars. The old-fashioned building is a labyrinth, with several four-appartment floors filled with shelves crammed with books. They are not catalogued and cannot be borrowed: they have to be read on-site. The reader is trusted to put the book back where they (or he – no female patrons are mentioned) found it: the titles of the books placed before and after it on the shelf are written on its inner covers, which is far from foolproof (or thiefproof!), but there you are... Oh, and authors used to bring their new books to the library and place it on a shelf themselves, as it was rumoured to bring it “baraka” (good luck in Arabic – the word is used informally in French and was kept in the French translation, which makes me happy). Book translations for every language – known and unknown - seem to appear magically, and they are always perfect. Surely, such a place cannot be razed to the ground?
I loved this novel. I found it playful, erudite and moving. The translation flowed perfectly. And it prompted me to read Hayy ibn Yaqzan, for which I’m grateful.

>29 auntmarge64: The English translation of Micromégas is available on Project Gutenberg (Micromegas)

L'atome expliqué à mes petits-enfants (The atom explained to my grandchildren) by Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond



(We are told there are 7 mistakes in the cover picture. See if you can spot them!)


Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: N/A
First published in 2016


Jean-Marc Lévy-Leblond is a bona fide scientist – a physicist interested in the philosophy of science, and a writer of popular science books, such as L’atome expliqué à mes petits-enfants.
For some reason, I thought this book would be about nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. It isn’t: it’s quite literally about atoms – what they are, what they are made of, how they were first theorized and discovered, etc. The concepts are explained clearly, and it’s a pleasant, accessible read if you don’t mind the faux-naïve question-and-answer format, with a straw-grandchild who somehow doesn’t know the difference between an atom and a molecule, but knows and can use the Avogadro number. I didn’t regret reading this book: it refreshed a number of points in my mind – things that I remembered learning in science class between the ages of 14 and 17, I’d say, with extra info on subatomic particles that I’d gleaned elsewhere and had half-forgotten.

>32 Dilara86: I think I would need to read the book to spot the errors...at least I would need some context. Electrons as large dots?

>26 Dilara86: this was a great review. Thank you as I also had not heard of Hayy bin Yaqzân (although I can’t say my impression is that I should have heard of it). Pretty cool that the Rabie book took you there.

Anyway, enjoyed catching up.

>33 dchaikin: Yes, that's basically it! I'll see if I can find the answers again in the book before I return it: The nucleus is not to scale - it should be too small to be visible. Electrons do not orbit around the nucleus. They're all the same and they obviously don't come in assorted colours. Atoms are "fuzzier" - they're not perfect spheres with a definite outside and inside. There are only two types of quantons in the nucleus - they're not the medley of sizes and colours we can see on the artwork. There should be as many electrons as there are protons. I'm missing one error. It's probably something obvious.

Just a quick update...

I haven't had a lot of free time lately. I did manage to read selected tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses. I enjoyed the language - there's something to latin translations, with their unique tone and idiosyncratic mixing of past and present tenses, that works almost like a Pavlovian cue, transporting me to some kind of "mythological land". I feel slightly ashamed that I didn't read the complete tales, not least because none of the stories in the selection were new to me, but I couldn't face a doorstop at the time. I just wanted a bit of background before reading Yōko Tawada's Opium pour Ovide (Opium für Ovid - Opium for Ovid), which was slightly surreal and lovely.

Next was Ces femmes-là (Those women) by Gérard Mordillat: not terrible but not a keeper. I might elaborate later when I have more time.

Au-delà des frontières (Beyond borders) by Andreï Makine was a confused dystopic, near-future novel centered around an incel-type, far-right young writer who commits suicide.

Le cinquième principe (Il quinto principio - The 5th law - of thermodynamics, of all things!) by Vittorio Catani is good old-fashioned SF of the kind I hate. For a novel first published in 2009, its sexual politics are awful. This is what reading Heinlein must feel like. I gave up on page 100.

I'm now starting Les jardins statuaires (Statue Gardens) by Jacques Abeille. I'm hopeful.

Cookbooks I’ve read recently



Joyeusement veggie : 50 recettes pour une cuisine saine et responsable (Merrily veggie – or possibly “Merrily végé ;)”-: 50 recipes for healthy and responsible cooking) by Camille Dides





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: N/A
First published in 2018


The first part of the book contains all sorts of information about vegan substitutes, the latest in healthy eating, nutrition and fashionable ingredients. It’s all annoyingly on-trend, and there’s nothing you couldn’t find somewhere else, but at least the explanations are clear and it’s reasonably useful. The second part contains recipes, and again there’s nothing you couldn’t find somewhere else. In fact, if you’ve been on Pinterest or Internet cooking blogs, you probably know them all, or some version of them: Buddha bowls, cauliflower rice, vegetable waffles, chia puddings, acai bowls, dhal (spelt dahl, of course)... Someone spent too much time on Instagram, looking at content in English. I don’t know how this book ever got published. It is completely unoriginal, and the text is peppered with gratuitous English words. If there was such a thing, it would get an award for Cringiest Book of the Year.

Examples of terrible prose and ridiculous uses of English:

- The book’s title for a start
- Sensible aux questions de santé, de bien-être et d’écologie, Camille Dides a ouvert en 2016, JOY Healthyfood, le premier restaurant healthy de Montpellier.
- Lunch bowl d’été
- Pink salade
-Green gaspacho
- Veggie makis
- La nice cream est une glace minute, à base principalement de rondelles de bananes congelées et mixées, qui exclut tous les produits laitiers d’origine animale. Le résultat ? Un délice ultra-crémeux, déclinable à l’infini, qu’on peut customiser en ajoutant des fruits (…) ou encore des toppings gourmands.

Eat Nature - L'herbier gourmand (Fra naturens spiskammer) by Anne Mæhlum, translated by Marina Heide





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: Norwegian
Original language: Norwegian
Translated into: French
Location: Europe


Here’s another ridiculous half-French, half-English title, but at least, there’s a decent book between the two covers. It’s a guide to foraging. The photos and information about each plant are generally useful, and the recipes are appealing. Having said that, the calendar is definitely off for my part of the world (South of the Loire river).



Je cuisine un jour bleu : Gourmets autistes, recettes et témoignages (Cooking on a blue day : autistic gourmets, recipes and stories) by Josef Schovanec





Writers’ genders: All
Writer’s nationality: All or mostly French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: France



This book contains recipes given by autistic home cooks and parents of autistic children and teenagers. (There is also a recipe for macarons created by a professional chef for people who cannot deal with the difference in texture between the “biscuit” and the ganache in regular macarons.) They are aimed at people with sensory processing disorder. Most recipes are basic and were created to work around a particular child’s difficulties with food. They might not look particularly appealing to the majority of people, but then they’re not necessarily supposed to. The book was designed as a way for parents to share ideas and practical advice to get their child to eat and maybe try a wider range of food. If it means puréing everything, or making sure every dish is green or not green, so be it!



Thailande : Cuisine intime et gourmande by Anchalee Tiaree and Catherine Cauneille-Sukrasorn





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: Thai and French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Thailand



Lovely recipes from a family restaurant owned by a mother and daughter, with plenty of background information and a bit of life story. Most dishes contain some kind of seafood.



La Cuisine Cajun by Judith Bluysen, translated by Hélène Bihery





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: US
Original language: English
Translated into: French
Location: Lousiana, USA



This book is baffling. It was written in English for a French readership by the American owner of an American restaurant and shop in Paris. She comes from New York but fell in love with the food of Louisiana, and the tone of the book is very much “food tour with a keen amateur who pretends they have a lot more experience than they actually do”. I would have preferred a cookbook written by an insider.
Did I mention it was written in English? For French people? The good thing is explanations are geared towards a French readership and most recipes are presented with a realistic list of ingredients for France (saucisse de Montbéliard instead of whatever type of smoked sausage used in the US, for example). There are however a number of ingredients that cannot be substituted and would presumably have to be bought from the author’s shop or another specialised shop (canned pumpkin – using fresh pumpkin is apparently so risky we’re advised not to even try…). Some of the terminological choices were downright odd. She uses the words Tablespoon and Teaspoon (capitalised) in English instead of French words because, wait for it, there are no standard teaspoon and tablespoon measurements in France (there are and have been for decades: 15g for a tablespoon, 5g for a teaspoon, just like she says in the book). Other symptoms of Inassimilated Expat Syndrome include the use of “Dark Brown Sugar (vergeoise brune)” and Baking Powder “(levure chimique)” when you could just use the French terms on their own and leave off capital letters. It’s annoying to read and it leaves me with the impression that the author is not half as comfortable in French culture as she claims to be. I don’t actually know how authentic any of the recipes are, but they look OK and doable. They seem to be mostly the type of dishes you’d find in restaurants (eggs benedict, jambalaya, gumbos, southern fried chicken…), with the addition of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner that doesn’t look specifically Cajun.





Cuisine Actuelle de l'Afrique noire by Alexandre Bella Ola





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French, Cameroonian
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: West Africa


Alexandre Bella Ola is a (minor) celebrity chef. He has an African restaurant in Paris and he’s occasionally on TV.
The book’s title is misleading: it features recipes mostly from Cameroon and West Africa. Other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa are not really represented. Recipes are pretty basic and not terribly inspiring. Slightly disappointing.

Le Pont aux trois arches by Ismail Kadare, translated by Jusuf Vrioni





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Albanian
Original language: Albanian
Translated into: French
Location: A village in medieval Albania
First published in 1978


In 1377, as Albania is threatened by the Ottoman empire, an erudite monk and chronicler called Gjon observes the construction of a three-arched bridge over the Ouyane river to replace the old ferrying business. The river seems intent on destroying the builders’ hard work. Old songs mention walling a human sacrifice inside a building in order to pacify the spirits and ensure its longevity. This looks like a practical and logical solution to try and there is a call for volunteers. The plot sounds so good on paper, but the novel itself was a bit of a let-down, in part because the historical scene-setting felt more Victorian than medieval. This is a reminder that even great authors can write middling books! I don’t regret reading it, but it’s probably my least favourite Kadare novel so far (bearing in mind I love Kadare).

Le mangeur de livres (The book-eater) by Stéphane Malandrin





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Lisbon (Portugal)
First published in 2019


Adar and Faustino are two street urchins living in fifteenth-century Lisbon. Mad with hunger, Adar eats the pages of a very old and very cursed codex. From that point on, he becomes obsessed with finding and eating every book he can find, and starts to turn into a bovine monster. There are more than a few nods to Rabelais in this novel, and the language is accordingly rich and pungent. Ultimately, the story left me cold – it was too flamboyant for my taste - but someone else would no doubt find it a lot of fun.

De purs hommes (Pure Men) by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Senegalese
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Senegal
First published in 2018


Mohamed Mbougar Sarr is a young Senegalese author whose previous novels were very well received: Terre ceinte was awarded the Prix Ahmadou Kourouma (Switzerland) and the Grand prix du roman métis (France); Silence du chœur the Prix littérature-monde Étonnants Voyageurs. His books have been in my wishlist for a few months, so when I saw De purs hommes showcased in my local library, I had to borrow it. De purs hommes is a study in the hypocrisy surrounding homosexuality and knee-jerk homophobia in Senegalese society, which makes it an unplanned but particularly apt read for Pride Month.

Ndéné is a 37-year old lecturer in French literature who lives like a student, teaches Romantic and Symbolist poets, and loves women. When his bisexual female lover shows him a viral video of a mob digging up the body of a man suspected of being a “goor-jigéen” – a “man-woman”, that is a non-heteronormative man whether gay, effeminate or transvestite – in a cemetery to remove it from consecrated ground, it sets off a series of events that will end catastrophically, but not before changing his life and way of looking at the world.
It’s a fairly graphic (heterosexual sex and homophobic violence) and ambitious novel, with numerous nods to 19th-century poets – Baudelaire, Musset, Verlaine, etc. - helpfully identified on my library book by a previous reader with very shaky handwriting (you can picture me rolling my eyes here, although to be perfectly honest, I was half-grateful for some of the notes, as I wouldn’t have spotted them). It was stylistically competent and moving, but there were some weaknesses – mainly characterisation and an overly didactic tone in places. I’m looking forward to reading Sarr’s other books, and I’m sure he’ll develop into a great writer.

Loving the cutting cookbook reviews! Some really interesting reading apart from that, too.

>40 wandering_star: Thank you! I try not to be overly critical, but I can't help myself sometimes!



Next in my review backlog:

Le français est à nous ! : Petit manuel d'émancipation linguistique by Maria Candea and Laélia Véron





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: French-speaking countries
First published in 2019


I found this book in my local newsagent’s tiny book aisle, among the usual Goncourt prize winners, romance novels and detective stories. This is indicative of the wide readership leftwing academic-minded publishers La Découverte are trying to reach with this book. In it, Maria Candea and Laélia Véron plead for making written French more modern, more rational, more inclusive and less sexist. They sometimes overstate their cases in their determination to cover all bases, but on the whole, I found this book to be a no-nonsense and accessible introduction to the historical, political and sociological ramifications of French grammatical and spelling rules. Obviously, diehard conservatives are not going to like it, but people who are on the fence, or had a knee-jerk negative reaction to the spelling reform or écriture inclusive might change their minds when they look at the facts.

Irrelevant takeaway factoid: Céline created the portmanteau word “trouducteur” from the words “trou du cul” (often shorten to trouduc – arsehole) and “traducteur” (translator).

>41 Dilara86: Interesting, I take note for a future reading.

I went from a diehard conservative position to a more open-minded position on this subject. I started to shift when reading L'homme qui rit by Victor Hugo. It is set in England and he keeps on using English words. I thought, if Hugo does it, maybe we can as well?
But I would not mind having more facts to better understand this evolution, so this book seems perfect! I am totally convinced by the feminisation of some words (but I still prefer "auteure" to "autrice"), less convinced by some words evolution (like "trop" becoming the new "très", but how do you say "trop" nowadays?) and by the contamination of English words we do not bother translate or adapt (I have even decided to try to avoid using "week end").

And interesting fact on Céline, especially for those of us who love so much reading in translation!

On an another note, I really like following your thread. You are expending my reading horizons, especially with non-fiction books, for which I am usually not very good. So thanks for that!

>42 raton-liseur: We seem to be more or less on the same page!

Having said that, I don't think we're in any danger of "trop" replacing "très". They're used in different contexts, and belong to different registers. (For the non-French speakers out there, "trop" means "too", as in "I'm too hot". It is used informally - typically by younger speakers - to modify an adjective when they feel that "très" (ie, "very") isn't strong enough, or even more controversially, just for general emphasis (ie, "j'ai trop la haine" - I'm so gutted).)

"Autrice" is an interesting example. I first came across it at the Utopiales science-fiction convention, where there was a concerted effort by some panel guests to use it (and it then spread to most other guests). They justified it by saying that "autrice" was an attested - if archaic - word, and that it had their personal preference over "auteure", which was fine, but unnecessary given that the existence of "autrice". The word felt odd for about half a day, and then completely unremarkable.

Then there's this from Le français est à nous !:

Les grammairiens du XVIIe siècle s'en sont pris aux mots qui désignaient des métiers jugés trop nobles pour être laissés aux femmes. Les mots en "-esse", fort nombreux ("peintresse", "doctoresse", "dompteresse"), ont fait l'objet d'un feu nourri d'un si grand nombre de moqueries, caricatures et pamphlets que peu ont résisté (...) En effet, "autrice"n'est pas un mot inventé par des féministes radicales au XXIe siècle : il s'agissait d'un mot régulier, d'origine latine, formé exactement comme "actrice", "amatrice" ou spectatrice". Comme il était difficile de l'attaquer, même avec des contorsions, sur des critères linguistiques, il a donc été ouvertement critiqué sur son sens, en raison du fait que les femmes n'étaient pas censées prétendre être autrices, tout comme elles n'étaient pas censées être traductrices, compositrices ou graveuses, "par la raison que ces mots n'ont été inventés que pour les hommes, qui exercent ces professions"*

* Louis-Nicolas Bescherelle, Grammaire nationale, 1834

Friday et Friday (Friday and Friday) by Antonythasan Jesuthasan, translated by Faustine Imbert-Vier, Elisabeth Sethupathy and Farhaan Wahab





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Lives in France, is a Tamil born in Sri Lanka, applied for French citizenship in 2018. I assume it was granted, but I could not find confirmation of this.
Original language: Tamil
Translated into: French
Location: Sri Lanka, France, brief scenes in other countries (Thailand, Laos, The Netherlands…)
First published in 2018


Antonythasan Jesuthasan, also called Shobasakthi, was born into a Tamil Christian family (as you’ve probably guessed from his name!) in Allaippiddi, on the island of Velanai in Sri Lanka. He became a Tamil Tiger as a teenager, then left the organisation and moved to different Asian countries, before settling in France as an asylum seeker in 1993. He writes in Tamil, and some of his books are available in English (Gorilla and Traitor). He is also an actor, and starred in Jacques Audiard’s film Dheepan, as well as Friday, an adaptation of his short story Friday and Friday.

Friday et Friday is a slim short story collection. It is well-written, moving and accomplished. All the stories describe a facet of Tamil experience: the war in Sri Lanka, exile, life in France as a Tamil refugee… I have added his novels to my wishlist: I’m curious about them.

Les jardins statuaires by Jacques Abeille





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: An unnamed fantasy country
First published in: This one is tricky. It was written in the seventies. The initial publisher folded before publication. Then, Julien Gracq (Abeille’s mentor) was going to submit the manuscript to famous publisher to the surrealists José Corti – or maybe he did submit it – but it got lost and Corti claims they never had it. It was eventually published in 1982, but with a series of snafus, the worst of which being the disappearance of the whole stock in a fire. All of this meant the novel flew under the radar for about twenty years. There were a number of reissues in the 2000s. It at last gained some recognition and a readership, culminating in its publication in Folio SF, a mass-paperback collection of standard SF/fantasy that skews towards big names. Its inclusion in Folio SF is slightly surprising: it is very much written outside of the fantasy genre, and more closely related to surrealism and magical realism literary fiction.


An unnamed, undescribed traveller explores a strange, dream-like country where people live in walled properties that look very much like Roman villas. Men cultivate statues in special gardens. They grow them from seed, and nurture them until they’re ripe and can be finished and sold. Women work in vegetable gardens, hidden behind mazes from the men working in the statue gardens. Adult males and females live segregated lives, and only see their closest relatives of the opposite sex in the evenings. At first, our traveller is charmed by the gardeners’ purposeful and peaceful life, but soon realises that things are not as idyllic as they first seemed. The lot of women and non-gardening men is rather cruel and unfair, for a start. And there is a mysterious and ominous threat coming from the steppes in the North. Think Buzzati’s The Tartar Steppe mixed with A Stranger in Olondria.

This novel is written in seamless literary, almost classical, French, with old-fashioned turns of phrase and imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive clauses (imparfait and plus que parfait du subjonctif). The tone is poetic; the writing is reflective and slow-paced. If it was a song, it would be from Gérard Manset. In fact, I think it would be Filles des jardins.
There were so many occasions where a lesser writer could have handled the material insensitively. I admit my heart sank a number of times, as I feared the story might be going in an unpleasant direction. Obviously, different readers have different thresholds, but I think Abeille stayed on the right side, for me. It would have been a terrible novel in the hands of a less reflective and less literary novelist. It could have been a seventies pulp full of reactionary yellow peril, white male leaders, half-naked women as sex objects and men doing the important, creative work. His novel is the exact opposite of this. For example, we’re well into the second half of the book before we get any kind of physical description, and then it becomes clear that the country is home to all kinds of skin colours and hair types. He was also able to write sex scenes sensitively and describe naked women in a way that feels non-voyeuristic. In a lot of ways, he did what modern, progressive SFF writers strive to do. There is something else that struck me and that I enjoyed in this book, and that is the way the narrator describes his inner thoughts and doubts as he is trying to communicate with others. Our minds seem to work in similar ways, and I felt a kind of kinship with him. I also realised as I was reading that I seldom see the way I and others around me interact with each other (manners, what’s said and unsaid, how we interpret the unsaid, how we express our discomfort and sense it in others…) described in fiction, and especially SFF. The sense of familiarity was refreshing and comforting. It might feel quite foreign to someone else, but that would also be a very good reason for reading this novel (not that this need explaining to Reading Globally members).

>44 Dilara86: I'll have to adopt the word "autrice" then. And yes, it makes sense from a linguistic point of view, I will just need a bit of time to get used to it!
I definitely think I'll get to Le français est à nous this summer!

Le jardinier d'Otchakov (The Gardener from Ochakov) by Andrey Kurkov, translated by Paul Lequesne





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Ukrainian
Original language: Russian
Translated into: French
Location: Otchakov and a village just outside Kiev, Ukraine
First published in 2012


Igor lives with his mother in a village outside Kiev. He doesn’t do much with his life and lives off his mother’s modest life savings. One day, their nosy neighbour introduces them to Stepan, a vagrant looking for some manual work in exchange for a place to stay. The mother accepts, and Igor and Stepan strike a tentative friendship. Through a series of events I won’t go into, they “liberate” some old suitcases full of USSR artifacts, including a militian’s uniform. When Igor wears it and drinks too much vodka, cognac, hazelnut liqueur, beer and wine, he is transported to the seaside town of Otchakov in 1957 for capers and adventures. This is an easy, entertaining read.

I haven't written enough posts to warrant a new thread for the summer quarter, so here's my summer introductory post.

Dilara’s Summer Reads: July to September



As usual, I'll be following Reading Globally's quarterly theme, which is Turning the tables - Postcolonial Writers on the Colonizers.
Last quarter, I read twice as many male writers as female. So I'll try to rebalance things a bit this summer.

Places I've visited so far this quarter:

• Cameroon in the thirties
  
• France x6
  
• France's former colonies x3
  
• Hungary x2
  

Carry-over from June:
La différenciation: Goûts, savoirs et expériences culturelles by Hervé Glevarec

July reads

1. Le pauvre Christ de Bomba by Mongo Béti
   
2. Children of Thorns, Children of Water by Aliette de Bodard
   
3. Paroles d'honneur by Leïla Slimani and Laetitia Coryn
   
4. Petite histoire des colonies françaises, tome 3 : La Décolonisation by Grégory Jarry
   
5. Petite histoire des colonies françaises - Tome 4 : La Françafrique by Grégory Jarry
   
6. Petite histoire des colonies françaises, Tome 5 : Les Immigrés by Grégory Jarry
   
7. Pauline à Paris by Benoit Vidal
   
8. Bazar magyar by Viviane Chocas
   
9. Abigaël by Magda Szabó
   
10. Savoir pour qui voter est important by Grégory Jarry
    
11. Les confidences by Marie Nimier
    
12. Luck is the Hook by Imtiaz Dharker
    
13. Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
    
14. 52 recettes aux bières de Wallonie by Alice Delvaille
    
15. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
    
16. A Taste of England: the West Country by Theodora Fitzgibbon
    
17. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
    
18. On Being White and Other Lies by James Baldwin (article)
    
19. Efuru by Flora Nwapa
    
    

Original languages of the books I've read this month:

• French: 11
  
• English: 8
  
• Hungarian: 1
  

• Number of female authors this month: 11
  
• Number of male authors this month: 5 (but 4 works by the same - male - author)
  
• Mixed male/female collaborations this month:
  

August reads

1. Cuisiniers et ouvrages culinaires du Moyen Age by Josy Marty-Dufaut
   
2. Real Fast Indian Food - More Than 100 Simple, Delicious Recipes You Can Cook in Minutes by Mridula Baljekar
   
3. The Food of Oman: Recipes and Stories from the Gateway to Arabia by Felicia Campbell
   
4. Et si c'était hormonal ? by Caroline Balma-Chaminadour
   
5. Le Ministre est enceinte by Bernard Cerquiglini
   
6. The Kinfolk Table by Nathan Williams
   
7. Summary of White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (Conversation Starters) by Paul Adams (not really a book - more of a book club aid)
   
8. Curry: Eating, Reading, and Race by Naben Ruthnum
   
9. La Vie secrète des arbres by Peter Wohlleben
   
10. Pays natal by Osamu Dazai
    
11. The Salt Roads by Nalo Hopkinson (unfinished)
    
12. How to build a girl : a novel by Caitlin Moran
    
13. The Worst Breakfast by China Mieville
    
14. Bring Your Lunch: Quick and Tasty Wallet-Friendly Lunches for Grown-Ups by Califia Suntree (unfinished)
    
15. Autumn by Ali Smith
    
16. How To Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran
    
17. Chant de l'étoile du nord : Carnet de Iboshi Hokuto by Iboshi Hokuto
    
18. Un peu de la France by Sempé
    

Original languages of the books I've read this month:

• French: 3 (4 with the Sempé book)
  
• English: 11
  
• German: 1
  
• Japanese: 2
  
  

• Number of female authors this month: 8
  
• Number of male authors this month: 9
  
• Mixed male/female collaborations this month: N/A
  

September reads

1. En beauté by Kim Hoon
   
2. Les gens du Balto by Faïza Guène
   
3. Et tout ce qui reste est pour toi by Xu Xing
   
4. La chasseuse de trolls by Stefan Spjut
   
5. Minerai noir, anthologie personnelle et autres recueils by René Depestre
   
6. Les nègres n'iront jamais au paradis by Tanella Boni (unfinished)
   
7. Le visiteur du Sud : Le journal de Monsieur Oh en Corée du Nord : Edition intégrale by Yeong-Jin Oh
   
8. Yogurt Culture: A Global Look at How to Make, Bake, Sip, and Chill the World's Creamiest, Healthiest Food by Cheryl Sternman Rule
   
9. Voyage en Europe: De Charlemagne à nos jours by François Reynaert
   
10. The Testaments: The Sequel to The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
    
11. Les aventuriers du Cilento by Michel Quint (unfinished)
    
12. This Census-Taker by China Miéville
    
13. The Big Book of Rhyming Slang by Jonathon Green
    

Original languages of the books I've read this month:

• French: 5
  
• English: 4
  
• Korean: 2
  
• Chinese: 1
  
• Swedish: 1
  

• Number of female authors this month: 4
  
• Number of male authors this month: 9
  
• Mixed male/female collaborations this month: 0
  

October reads

1. Rouge impératrice: roman by Léonora Miano
   
2. La Cuisine des châteaux de la Loire by Gilles du Pontavice
   
3. Tu seras végétalien ! by Georges Butaud and Sophie Zaïkowska
   
4. Comme un million de papillons noirs by Laura Nsafou (the title is a quote from Toni Morrison’s novel God help the child: "Her clothes were white, her hair like a million black butterflies asleep on her head")
   
5. Cataractes by Sonja Delzongle
   
6. Au Petit Bonheur la Brousse by Noël Ndjekery Netono
   
7. The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard
   
8. Les esclaves oubliés de Tromelin by Sylvain Savoia
   
9. Les mouettes by Sándor Márai (unfinished)
   
10. Miss Islande by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir
    
11. Alpha: Abidjan-Gare du Nord by Bessora
    
12. L'histoire passe à table ! : Les 50 repas qui ont fait le monde by Marion Godfroy and Xavier Dectot
    
13. Une éducation catholique by Catherine Cusset
    
14. La Confusion des sentiments by Stefan Zweig
    
15. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg by Dubravka Ugrešić
    
16. L´Art de la vulve, une obscénité ? by Rokudenashiko
    
17. Commando culotte : Les dessous du genre et de la pop-culture by Mirion Malle
    
18. Benares: Michelin Starred Cooking by Atul Kochhar
    
19. Les pieds bandés by Li Kunwu
    
20. La Poésie allemande by Carole Gündogar-Taithe et al
    
21. La nostalgie : Quand donc est-on chez soi ? Ulysse, Enée, Arendt by Barbara Cassin
    
22. Une traversée de Paris by Eric Hazan
    
23. La Poésie Japonaise by Christophe Hardy et al
    
24. Une trop bruyante solitude : roman by Bohumil Hrabal
    
25. Et si on mangeait moins de viande by Thomas Dufour
    
26. Le Silence de la mémoire: à la recherche des Juifs de Płock by Nicole Lapierre
    
27. 13 écrivains tchèques : les belles étrangères by Catherine Servant et al
    
28. De la mort sans exagérer by Wisława Szymborska
    
29. Jour de courage by Brigitte Giraud
    
30. Le Convoi du 24 janvier by Charlotte Delbo
    
31. Les grands espaces by Catherine Meurisse
    
32. Savoir-vivre ou mourir by Catherine Meurisse
    
33. Mes hommes de lettres : Petit précis de littérature française by Catherine Meurisse
    
34. Toiles d'araignées by Ibrahima Ly
    
    

Original languages of the books I've read this month:

• French: 21
  
• English: 2
  
• Icelandic: 1
  
• German: 2
  
• Hungarian: 1
  
• Croatian: 1
  
• Japanese: 2
  
• Chinese: 1
  
• Czech: 2
  
• Polish: 1
  

• Number of female authors this month: 16
  
• Number of male authors this month: 11
  
• Mixed male/female collaborations and mixed-gender anthologies this month: 5
  

>52 Dilara86:

Are you going to review En beauté? I read it last year and you're the only other person I've seen read this so I'm curious to know what you thought of it.

>54 lilisin: Will do, as best I can given my goldfish mind.

En beauté by Kim Hoon, translated by Han Yumi and Hervé Péjaudier





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: South Korean
Original language: Korean
Translated into: French
Location: Korea
First published in Korea in 2004 (?), published in France in 2018


The middle-aged chief sales officer of a cosmetics company has just lost his wife to cancer. He had to balance looking after his ailing wife and holding down a very demanding job, not to mention his crush of almost teenage proportions on a younger employee. Now, he has a funeral to organize and attend, and there’s an advertising campaign to launch. This slim novel describes failing bodies, bodily functions, cosmetic surgery, medical interventions, pain, death and illness so candidly, matter-of-factly and thoroughly it’s almost unbearable. But it’s not just the physical aspect that’s starkly described: Korean customs regarding work and family, the cosmetics industry’s questionable ethics, everyday hypocrisies and empty conventions are also laid out in a prose that is all the more powerful for being almost affect-free, as the wife’s funeral rites and the husband’s advertising campaign collide, in a culture where private and professional spheres overlap in a way that I find very shocking. This slim novel is honest, brave and pretty dark.

Chant de l'étoile du nord : Carnet de Iboshi Hokuto by Iboshi Hokuto, translated by Fumi Tsukuhara and Patrick Blanche





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Japanese
Original language: Japanese
Translated into: French
Location: Japan and Hokkaido in particular
Written between 1924 and 1929



This was a chance find on my local library’s poetry shelves. Iboshi Hokuto was an Ainu poet and activist. Ainus are the original inhabitants of the Japanese islands, predating the Japanese majority. Like many indigenous peoples around the world, they were pushed to the less hospitable parts of their country - in this case, Hokkaido - and suffered from the effect of acculturation and discrimination.

Iboshi wrote tankas and haikus in Japanese, some of which were published in various magazines. This was not enough to make a living. He therefore worked as a fisherman and a peddler selling hemorrhoid ointments (yes, really! And he wrote poetry about it.) This peripatetic life means he was able to visit many Ainu villages, collect anthropological data and spread his ideas. He died in his twenties from TB, exhaustion and malnutrition. Despite his short life, Iboshi is considered to be one of the greatest Ainu poets.

A lot of thought and care went into this slim book. It’s a collection of Iboshi’s tankas and of some of his haikus, in the original Japanese and in French, preceded by two introductions and a short biography. These were extremely useful and interesting, and I found the poetry moving, but it really is difficult to judge the quality of poetry in translation. One quibble: footnotes were replaced by “free” notes placed in the margins, which was not terribly user-friendly.


I am extremely happy to have found and bought this book.

Voyage en Europe: De Charlemagne à nos jours by François Reynaert





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Mostly Europe, but various other parts the world are mentioned
First published in 2019


François Reynaert takes us on a tour of European historical landmarks. His opening gambit is that if they are asked whether they’re interested in Czech history, most people would answer in the negative, and yet, when they visit Prague, all they do is learn about Czech history. I found this confidence in others’ intellectual curiosity endearing, especially in light of Prague’s stag night scene.
The book provides entertainment with a political edge: the writer’s aims are – I think - to show us French people that there is more to history than French history, and to demonstrate that European countries have been interdependent for centuries. To that effect, he reminds us that Germans have as much of a claim on Charlemagne as the French, that there was a Russian Front, that San Marino is the oldest republic in the world, that there used to be a Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, that Charles V of Hapsburg ruled over Spain, the Netherlands, Austria, parts of Germany and Italy, etc. Of course, in order to explain that we (the French) are not the centre of the world, the book has to revolve around us… The book only makes sense from a French perspective…
The writing is clear, concise, almost old-fashioned. Its outlook on European history is generous and optimistic, but the information isn’t always terribly accurate. This is a pleasant and informative popular history book, not an academically rigourous study.

>56 Dilara86:

An excellent review of a book I also enjoyed and was haunted by (particularly the cancer scenes). It was also nice to get a Korean perspective that isn't Han Kang's. I'm glad to see another reader discovering this book and enjoying it.

>58 Dilara86: If that were available in an English translation, I'd buy it in a heartbeat (says this half-British anglophone monoglot). I may buy it anyway.

>59 lilisin: I don't know about you, but I really had to brace myself for some of the descriptions, though. It's a very unconfortable read and definitely not for everyone. I hadn't winced this much since reading Riad Sattouf's Ma circoncision.

>60 haydninvienna: I think it's readable if you have high-school-level French. It wouldn't be painless, but it would be doable: the writing is pretty clear and straightforward.

>61 Dilara86: I do have HS French, except 50+ years ago. I wishlisted it anyway.

L'histoire passe à table ! : Les 50 repas qui ont fait le monde by Marion Godfroy and Xavier Dectot





Writer’s gender: 1 male, 1 female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Various places, mainly in Europe (including Britain), with one section in the Forbidden City (Beijing) and a handful in the United States
First published in 2019


Xavier Dectot and the unfortunately-named Marion Godfroy trawled library archives for descriptions of meals of historical interest, or linked to specific historical events: Yalta, the battle of Marengo, menus at the Forbidden city, the food Elvis gave to the Beatles, the Marquis de Sade’s food orders at the Bastille, Sissi’s pancakes, Burns Night fare, etc. It’s full of mildly interesting trivia given in a somewhat forced humorous tone. There is one recipe – and one recipe only – for each topic, which is frustrating, especially since most recipes seem quite decent. They might not be the actual recipes, as eaten at the event, but might be the authors’ version of the dish. They have an old-fashioned air about them in that they tend to be quite short and elliptic – think Tante Marie. You’re supposed to fill in the blanks yourself, which obviously requires a level of cooking proficiency. I don’t mind this myself, but it would obviously drive some people up the wall.

Catherine Meurisse

I read three Catherine Meurisses back to back. I might as well review them in the same post…

Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A

Catherine Meurisse is a French comic writer/illustrator. She studied literature as well as arts, and it shows. One of the three books I read is about French literature, the other two are chock-full of literary references. Meurisse was the only female cartoonist on Charlie Hebdo’s permanent staff at the time of the terrorist attack. She survived because she was late to that day’s meeting. She published two books – both autobiographical - since the attack: La légèreté, which is on my wishlist, and is about learning to live after Charlie Hebdo, and Les grands espaces, about her childhood.


Les grands espaces





Location: the Deux-Sèvres countryside
First published in 2018


This was recommended by someone at a book group focussing on comic books about women I attended a couple of weeks ago. This was my best rec so far. It’s about Meurisse’s childhood in the Poitou (Deux-Sèvres) countryside in the eighties and the family's move to an old run-down farm. There are ruins to rebuild, a garden to create, fossils and historical artefacts to collect, etc. while quoting Loti and Proust (the parents) and playing at being various historical figures (the children). I liked the illustrations, with their mixture of lush, semi-realistic landscapes in the background, and cartoonish characters. And of course, I loved the literary and historical references.



Savoir-vivre ou mourir





Location: A posh institute outside Geneva
First published in 2010

Together with journalist Agathe André, Catherine Meurisse took a course at the now-defunct Académie du savoir-vivre, an etiquette school created by Baroness Nadine de Rothschild. They got an article for Charlie Hebdo out of it, and Meurisse also made this funny, tongue-in-cheek comic book about her stay. She daydreams about the Princesse de Clèves and has romantic ideas about being this perfectly-behaved and poised lady of yesteryear. Had she be born in the Anglo world, she would have attended a Jane Austen weekend! Others are there for more prosaic reasons, but whether they wish to attract the right kind of husband or be the perfect political wife, it’s all very old-fashioned and Victorian. Meurisse has an eye for the ridiculous, and she laughs at herself most – apart from the teacher who is simply awful. This was a fun but infuriating read. Good for when you want to look down on people who have a lot more money than you’ll ever have.

Mes hommes de lettres : Petit précis de littérature française





Location: France
First published in 2008

This is a potted history of French literature, from the Roman de Renart to the Saint-Germain-des-prés crowd. The title Mes hommes de lettres (ie, My men of letters) has to be tongue-in-cheek: female writers (George Sand, Colette, Beauvoir – no Madame de la Fayette, oddly enough) are represented and she could have used a more neutral title had she wanted to. It’s presented as a good in for people who don’t read or don’t know the first thing about French authors. I don’t think that’s true. It was too unclear and “in-jokey” for this. It’s a bit like 1066 and all that: it’s funny if you already know a little bit about the subject; otherwise everything will pass you by. On the other hand, unless they have a mind like a sieve, anybody who studied French in a non-vocational high school or had access to the Lagarde et Michard series would recognise the authors, works and anecdotes, and would get the humour. It’s perfectly accessible.
I have to say I wasn’t bowled-over. I’ll set aside the fact that I was expecting a personal take on French authors, which would have been a lot more interesting, because that wouldn’t be fair. But still, the writing and the illustrations weren’t terribly clear. The humour wasn’t always to my taste and it wasn’t particularly informative.

De la mort sans exagérer by Wisława Szymborska, translated by Piotr Kaminski





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: Polish
Original language: Polish
Translated into: French
Location: N/A

This is a collection of poems written between 1957 and 2009 by literature Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska. The writing is sober, elegant and evocative. I was slightly taken aback by the translator’s tendency to omit grammatical articles. It might have been warranted by the source text. I don’t know… The translation was a pleasure to read nonetheless. I am glad this quarter’s Mitteleuropa theme pushed me into exploring this author. All I had read of her so far was one poem from the Penguin Book of Women Poets I bought and first read a good 25 years ago.

Comics and graphic novels about women

This post lists the books I’ve discovered through my local library’s book group, which this year is focussing on comics and graphic novels/works about women.

Apart from Les grands espaces by Catherine Meurisse which I’ve written about in my previous post, I’ve read the following works:



L´Art de la vulve, une obscénité ? (What is Obscenity?: The Story of a Good For Nothing Artist and her Pussy) by Rokudenashiko, translated by Ariane Bataille





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: Japanese
Original language: Japanese
Translated into: French
Location: Japan

Rokudenashiko, which means “good for nothing” in Japanese, is the Japanese artist who made cutesy models of her manko (pussy in Japanese), as political art, and ended up in jail for it a couple of years ago. She was arrested and investigated for obscenity, and jailed for the 21 days of the pre-trial investigation, which is standard in the Japanese legal system but baffling to me. This book contains the two mangas she wrote and drew about the whole thing. It’s interesting, and I learned a lot about Japanese culture and the Japanese prison system. In the French version, the manga is interspersed with mini-articles explaining issues and cultural context. In her manga, Rokudenashiko comes across as a bit of a “manic pixie dream girl” and not totally genuine (as is often the case with people who see life as a performance). But what she did was an important public service, and she paid a high price for it, especially given ridiculously small the “offense” was. It’s good that people around the world were supportive of her. At the end of the book, the editor explains that Rokudenashiko was a collateral victim of Prime minister Abe's right-wing government crack down on Rokudenashiko's magazine and its editor in particular.

ETA: I forgot to say that the impetus for her mouldings was the labiaplasty she had for aesthetic reasons and so that she would have an original subject for a manga - one that her editor would be sure to greenlight. Obviously, this is extremely problematic and not a great feminist premise.



Commando culotte : Les dessous du genre et de la pop-culture by Mirion Malle





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Nominally, France, but she describes a global phenomenon that is very much dependent on US (pop) culture

This book started its life as a blog. Each chapter is a pop feminist critique of a popular culture artifact: movies (mostly American), TV series (mostly American), cultural habits… The thing is, I agree with most of what Mirion Malle says, but her tone (condescending and prone to state the obvious) and her style (so many English words she just sounds phony) irritate me to distraction. Also, the book says absolutely nothing new, and what it says is expressed in the vocabulary of US feminism – cue English words - and through the US feminist lens. It makes no sense to read her rather than the original thinkers. You’d be better off watching Feminist Frequency (which is namechecked) on Youtube. It’s derivative, throwaway cultural commentary.



Les pieds bandés by Li Kunwu, translated by Ning An





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Chinese
Original language: Chinese
Translated into: French
Location: China

It seems I’m in a minority, but I liked the way this manhua (Chinese manga) was drawn. It was dark, detailed and expressive. I didn’t like the plot holes, clichés and shoehornings. The theme was interesting, and I learned a few things about the historical and geographical contexts of footbinding, but the story was of no intrinsic value. I would have been happier with the same book stripped of its cheesy “historical reenactment” bits. The non-fiction side of it was great.

>66 Dilara86: It felt strange to see this graphic novel, Les pieds bandés, that I read some time back! I went to read my review again and I am of those people who did not particularly like the drawing technic. But I still remember how dark the story was and that I really liked this story. It was interesting to see you point of view and to be able to compare notes!

November reads

1. Royaume de vent et de colères by Jean-Laurent Del Socorro
   
2. Gold Star Mothers by Catherine Grive and Fred Bernard
   
3. L'Accablante Apathie des Dimanches à Rosbif by Gilles Larher and Sébastien Vassant
   
4. Céréales & légumineuses : 65 céréales et légumineuses, gestes et techniques, 110 recettes by Régis Marcon
   
5. La vie de palais by Richard Malka and Catherine Meurisse
   
6. Le Clou (literally, The Nail - as in hammer and nails - but apparently, the English title is Cocoon) by Zhang Yueran
   
7. De pierre et d'os by Bérengère Cournut
   
8. La légèreté by Meurisse Catherine
   
9. Being Indian by Pavan K. Varma
   
10. Mélodie: Chronique d'une passion by Akira Mizubayashi
    
11. L'écorce des choses by Cécile Bidault
    
12. Les tribulations d'une caissière : 1 - Vous êtes ouverte ? by Wol
    
13. Propriété privée by Julia Deck
    
14. La mélancolie de la résistance by László Krasznahorkai
    
15. La Suède à table : 50 recettes généreuses by Jean-Marie Potiez
    
16. L'Ignare : Edition bilingue français-japonais by Shuntarō Tanikawa
    
17. La Cuisine russe by Michel Parfenov
    
18. Poèmes by Anne Hébert
    
19. Le rêve d'un Groenlandais by Mathias Storch
    
20. Qu'Allah bénisse la France ! by Abd Al Malik
    

Original languages of the books I've read this month:

• French: 15
  
• English: 1
  
• Greenlandic: 1
  
• Hungarian: 1
  
• Japanese: 1
  
• Chinese: 1
  

• Number of female authors this month: 11
  
• Number of male authors this month: 6
  
• Mixed male/female collaborations and mixed-gender anthologies this month: 3
  

Royaume de vent et de colères by Jean-Laurent Del Socorro





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Marseille in the sixteenth-century
First published in 2015


This was not a perfect fit for me. It’s an adventure yarn set in an alternate-history Marseille around the time of the short-lived Marseille independent “republic” and the assassination of Charles de Casaulx in 1596. I could find nothing in English about this event. It’s not very well-known: it didn’t happen in Paris... The novel is very readable. It’s short, fast-paced and with plenty of fights. Think Alexandre Dumas with easier syntax (the present tense is used throughout). The writing is not simplistic: it alternates between different points of view and the vocabulary is reasonably wide, but dialogues are written in contemporary French, which I find jarring but it no doubt makes it more accessible to its core readership which is not me…
Because the action is set in a Mediterranean port, there are plenty of occasions to introduce diversity, even in the sixteenth-century. Not that it would have stopped other authors from having an all-white, all-male “cast”. But Jean-Laurent Del Socorro is very careful to have a range of well-developed characters (for a given value of “developed”: the novel reads like a TV series – it’s entertaining, the historical slant to the story gives it a slight cultural veneer, but there’s not a lot of depth). One of the main POV characters is Black, female and not very interested in home-making: she’s a fighter and used to be a Landsknecht (mercenary soldier), as was her much more maternal and peaceful husband. The head of the soapmakers’ guild, which is a front for an assassins’ organisation is also a woman, and one of her right hands is Turkish. There is also a gay couple.
On the face of it, it might look like political-correctness box-ticking, but I think it works very well and feels natural. This is a good novel for people who want a bit of weight to their light reading and are looking for historical fantasy escapism with progressive, modern values. It’s probably also a good choice for learners of French.

Gold Star Mothers by Catherine Grive and Fred Bernard





Writer’s gender: Female writer, male illustrator
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: A cruise ship bound for France, Paris, and the First World War military cemeteries in Northern France
First published in 2017



This graphic novel was inspired by historical facts. In the thirties, a number of trips were organised by a charity and the US government to take the widows and mothers of US soldiers who died in Europe during the First World War to visit their graves. The premise is promising. Unfortunately, the story is riddled with clichés and of no interest whatsoever.




L'Accablante Apathie des Dimanches à Rosbif by Gilles Larher and Sébastien Vassant





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: France I suppose
First published in 2008


I found this graphic novel at the library: I was intrigued by the title, but could not get into it at all and did not finish it.

Gold Star Mothers by Catherine Grive and Fred Bernard





Writer’s gender: Female writer, male illustrator
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: A cruise ship bound for France, Paris, and the First World War military cemeteries in Northern France
First published in 2017



This graphic novel was inspired by historical facts. In the thirties, a number of trips were organised by a charity and the US government to take the widows and mothers of US soldiers who died in Europe during the First World War to visit their graves. The premise is promising. Unfortunately, the story is riddled with clichés and of no interest whatsoever.




L'Accablante Apathie des Dimanches à Rosbif by Gilles Larher and Sébastien Vassant





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: France I suppose
First published in 2008


I found this graphic novel at the library: I was intrigued by the title, but could not get into it at all and did not finish it.

Céréales & légumineuses : 65 céréales et légumineuses, gestes et techniques, 110 recettes by Régis Marcon, Estérelle Payani (secondary author), Philippe Barret (photographer), Nathalie Nannini (stylist)





Writer’s gender: Male (main author and photographer), female (secondary author and stylist)
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: French
Location: N/A
First published in 2019


This is a hefty coffee table book with glossy photographs of pulses and grains that’s also a decent reference book.
There’s a double page dedicated to each food, from amaranth to spelt, not to mention mungbean, khorasan, millet, black-eye pea and fagiolo verdolino. It includes a pretty picture and plenty of information: alternate names in French, and sometimes even in Spanish and English, as well as botanical, historical, cultural and culinary information.
The second part of this book is dedicated to basic cooking techniques for grains and pulses. I don’t understand Marcon’s obsession with getting perfectly separate grains at all costs, even when, as is the case with Japanese sushi rice or glutinous rice, they’re meant to be sticky and are delicious as they are. He clearly also likes his porridge undercooked and with a lot of bite left to it…
Recipes are shunted to the third and last part of the book. They can be a bit “cheffy” and aspirational, but on the whole, they look doable. As is often the case with recipes inspired from the wholefood/vegan movement, unnecessary English words and concepts are used, but Marcon is not by any means the worst offender. In any case, I liked his recipes and the first part of the book is very useful to people like me who like to collect strange pulses and grains, and then spend a frustrating amount of time looking up information about them on the Internet. I borrowed this book from the library, but I’m thinking of buying it, just for the botanical compendium.

>72 Dilara86: I tried the cucumber, avocado and pea chilled soup. It looked so nice on the page, but it was too sweet and one-note, and actually a bit sickly. A small bowl goes a long way. The general concept of the recipe appeals to me, though. I'll give it another try with a few tweaks: maybe a bit of lemon juice to cut through the sweetness.

Le clou by Zhang Yueran, translated by Dominique Magny-Roux





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: Chinese
Original language: Chinese
Translated into: French
Location: A university town/campus called Nanyuan, near Jinan in China
First published in French in 2019 (I forgot to write down the original Chinese publication date before returning the book to the library)



This was one of the books from the rentrée littéraire that my local library bought and fast-tracked onto the shelves this autumn. It ticked a lot boxes for me: it’s about family; politics and recent Chinese history (the Cultural Revolution) loom large; it’s translated literature… But I’ve been disappointed before by novels I thought would be a perfect fit. Not this time. The writing is exquisite.

The author chose to write alternating chapters from both main characters – childhood sweethearts Li Jiaqi and Cheng Gong - in the second person singular. They’re addressed to each other but they’re not in direct conversation with each other. She then deftly weaves in the story of their parents and grandparents. One word of warning: nobody in the story comes out smelling of roses. There’s an undercurrent of cruelty and to all the characters, and nobody’s happy or well-adjusted… The author writes bluntly about subjects that I, as a Westerner, find a bit sensitive. For example, the bed-bound grandfather is called “vegetable-grandpa”. This is definitely not a feel-good family saga. It is however, an ambitious first novel, and I’m looking forward to reading more from Zhang Yueran.

La parade (Parada – The Parade) by Srđan Dragojević





Director/screenwriter’s gender: Male
Director/screenwriter’s nationality: Serbian
Original language: Serbian
Subtitled into: French
Location: Belgrade (Serbia), Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia
First released in 2011


This is a film, not a book, but it fits in with my Mediterranean-themed and Mitteleuropa-themed reads this year.
The trials and tribulations of the organisers of the 2010 Belgrade Gay Pride, and of the thugs responsible for their safety. The Wikipedia article is here. I could not find an English trailer, so here’s one with French subtitles. It’s very violent in places, and the humour is far from subtle. You’re hit over the head with emotions, which I don’t usually enjoy very much, but here I think it works (YMMV). I hope with all my heart that the hypermasculine and far-right stereotypes were played up for the film, although reading up on the Belgrade gay pride riots, I fear they might not have been…

>72 Dilara86: As is often the case with recipes inspired from the wholefood/vegan movement, unnecessary English words and concepts are used

...just a little soupçon of revenge for what your M. Escoffier and his cronies did to the poor old English language!

>76 thorold: Good point ;-)
It also works with Italian. I feel a bit sad every time I read "rucola" instead of "rocket" or "porcini" instead of "cep"...

Also, it's funny how humans always have to give their own twists to the words they borrow from other languages. I'd like to speak to the person who retro-engineering the word "baton" for French bread that's shaped like a baguette (what I would simply call "pain", and purists would call "pain parisien").

De pierre et d'os (Of Stone and Bone) by Bérengère Cournut





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: The Arctic
First published in 2019


This is the fourth rentrée littéraire novel I’ve borrowed so far this year (I also bought one: Rouge Impératrice). Only one to go, and I’ll have read all the ones that appealed to me. I’ve been lucky this time - or people have been less eager to place holds on those books: last year, I had to wait until spring for some of them…

As it happens, I could have lived without reading De pierre et d’os. It’s an “ethnology” novel about an Inuit woman living in the semi-recent past (her Inuits live a traditional, nomadic, hunter-gatherer life but some of them have rifles). Think Loti and Raspail. Bérengère Cournut wrote it during a residency at the National Natural History Museum. I probably wouldn’t have read it had I known that the writer had minimal first-hand knowledge of the people she describes.
I found the novel simplistic. Narratively, it’s just a succession of set pieces: character loses her parents, character survives on her own, character successfully hunts this animal, character successfully hunts this other animal, then that one, character lives through a number of ordeals, character becomes a shaman, etc. These are interspersed with songs sung by different characters. They move the story along or give us extra information about that character’s motivations/psychology. This was – in my opinion – a very clever, very well-executed narrative device. I feel Cournut might be a better poet than novelist for adults. It also gave this book even more of a “children’s book” feel, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your outlook...
In summation, this novel was not my cup of tea, but clearly, some people disagreed. It had some rave reviews.

>78 Dilara86: Too bad, the cover is lovely and the title sounds intriguing. I'll pass...

>79 raton-liseur: You never know, you may like it better than I did ;-) On the other hand, there are so many better books out there...

That reminds me, I should be getting my hands on L'écorce des choses soon. The person who was hoarding it has - at long last - returned it. I'm amazed at the number of patrons who apparently think nothing of returning books several weeks overdue.

La légèreté (literally: The lightness, but it hasn't been translated into English as far as I know, just in every other European language...) by Catherine Meurisse





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Paris (France), Cabourg (France), Rome (Italy)
First published in 2016


I’ve been on a Catherine Meurisse binge these last few weeks: it’s easy, my library has them all. I have now read all the ones I wanted to read: La légèreté was the last one on my wishlist. This is the one she wrote after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. She was late to that morning’s meeting – you’ll know why if you read the book – which is why she’s still alive and her friends/colleagues aren’t, with a couple of exceptions. In this book, she charts her psychological journey, from her initial reaction (shock and mental dissociation), to her attempts at recovery – immersing herself in beauty, nature, art and literature, trying to drown out the trauma of the attack with a self-induced Stendhal syndrome. Because it’s Meurisse, it’s funny and self-deprecatory, sometimes annoyingly vulgar and thoughtless, sometimes breathtakingly beautiful.
You can see the range of drawing styles she uses here. Just click on FEUILLETER CET ALBUM right under the cover to browse the book.

Mélodie: Chronique d'une passion (Mélodie : Chronicle of a Passion) by Akira Mizubayashi






Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Japanese
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Tokyo (Japan)
First published in 2013


Mélodie is the name of the author’s beloved golden retriever. (They’re a musical (and literary) family. Mélodie’s children are called Jazz, Tosca, Amati, Lulu (from the Alban Berg opera) and Bartok.) Mélodie: Chronique d’une passion is the story of her life in the Mizubayashi household, of the very special bond between her and the author, of her eventual death from cancer when she was twelve, and of the author’s mourning for her. Interspersed with this narrative are short reflective chapters about music, various fictional dogs (Argos in the Odyssey, the dog in Chaplin’s A Dog’s Life…), the place different philosophical schools (Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mark Rowlands…) give to pets and the animal kingdom, the way different authors wrote about their own pets…

Mélodie-chan was a very special dog in the eyes of the family. She was loving, well-behaved and considerate. The term “passion” in the title was possibly not the best word choice: it makes it sound like Mizubayashi had unnatural relations with his dog. He certainly loved her, and especially towards the end of her life, he arranged his life around her so that she wouldn’t be left alone for too long, but from what I can gather from the book, it all seems above board: she was simply part of the family, and as such, treated with love and care. For example, she was allowed into the main part of the house – not just the genkan – which apparently is unusual in Japan. They would clean her paws after each walk so that she wouldn’t tread dirt inside.

It’s a very thoughtful, moving book about the love of a man – and by extension humankind – for a dog – and by extension for their pets. Don’t read it if you don’t want to cry at the end.

>82 Dilara86:

I hadn't realized this author had written more books than that one I read. Although I don't know if I would read this one but I loved loved loved his Une langue venue d'ailleurs as I was really able to connect and identify with his feelings.

L'écorce des choses by Cécile Bidault





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: N/A
First published in 2017


I loved this poetic and almost wordless children’s graphic novel about a little deaf girl. I discovered it through Raton Liseur’s excellent review (Thank you! It would never have been on my radar without you.) I don’t have anything else to say about it, except that it won a number of prizes, including the Artemisia prize for female comics artists, and the best children's book award at the International Romics Festival for the Italian version (La voce delle cose).

>83 lilisin:
Une langue venue d'ailleurs is definitely on my wishlist. I can fully understand that Mélodie : chronique d'une passion is not for everyone. I would have run a mile from any book about the death of a loved one last year, when the deaths of my mother and both my grandparents were still too raw. Plus, it's about a dog...

>84 Dilara86: I'm glad you liked this book. It's a real little gem, with a refreshing and unexpected story. I like your two-adjective summary: poetic and wordless!

La Suède à table : 50 recettes généreuses by Jean-Marie Potiez





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French (with the odd Swedish word)
Translated into: N/A
Location: Sweden
First published in 2012


This is a small Swedish cookbook written by a Frenchman who tells us he fell in love with Sweden back in 1982. It’s not a coffee-table tome full of unattainable foodporn. The book is on the good side of utilitarian: the recipes are clear and concise, there are plenty of pretty, if unimaginatively-shot, pictures, and all the dishes seem nice and doable.

I made laxpudding (potato, onion, salmon, dill, cream, egg) – nicknamed “quiche norraine” by my partner - for Sunday lunch. I eyeballed – and overestimated - the amount of potatoes needed, and didn’t use enough dill (it said half a bunch, but my bunch was probably on the small side), so I found it a bit bland. It’ll be better next time. And there will definitely be a next time: the picky eater didn’t drown it in ketchup, and called dibs on the leftovers for two consecutive meals, which has to be a record. Speaking of drowning it in ketchup… Apparently, you’re supposed to pour melted butter over your laxpudding? That seems like overkill. I was tempted to try, for authenticity’s sake (and I like butter), but didn’t in the end. If someone with experience has an opinion on this, I’m all ears…
Next in the list of things to try is “biff à la Lindström”, which is minced beef mixed with minced beetroot, capers, onion and potato. This looks like genius and I can’t wait to make it! Having read recently Et si on mangeait moins de viande, I’m interested in dishes that pad out a small amount of meat with vegetables, and this recipe looks promising.
Another recipe that caught my eye is Björns äppelpaj. One of the reasons for this is the amount of cinnamon used: 3 tablespoons! I know Swedes are very fond of cinnamon, but this seems really high, for 10 apples and 300g of shortbread pastry. Surely, you’d be hallucinating after a couple of slices! Maybe, Björn from Västergötland doesn’t mind ;-) Again, if someone with first-hand experience wants to chime in, please do. Maybe it’s a typo and you’re only supposed to use 3 teaspons (which already seems high to me…)?

L'Ignare by Tanikawa Shuntarō, translated by Dominique Palmé





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Japanese
Original language: Japanese
Translated into: French
Location: Japan/N/A
First published in 1993 (2014 for the French translation)


A poetry collection by “the Japanese Prévert”. The original Japanese is on the left page, the French translation on the right. I’m guessing the Prévert comparison is due to the fact that Tanikawa has a wide readership, and possibly also because he has written books for children. At least in translation, their respective styles are nothing alike.

La Cuisine russe by Michel Parfenov





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Russia
First published in 2005


Michel Parfenov was born in a White Russian family of landowners who escaped to France after the Revolution. He manages Actes Sud’s Russian collection and seems to travel back and forth quite a bit between France and Russia (with no apparent nostalgia for Old Russia).
This is a very entertaining book, that mixes personal anecdotes, quotes from Russian authors about food, history and recipes. It’s quite a slim tome, and I would have gladly read a much longer version… One nitpick: the illustrations were all monochrome, in sepia. This was fine for the little drawings that punctuate the book, but not great for the handful of art reproductions.

December reads

1. The Adriatic Kitchen: Recipes inspired by the abundance of seasonal ingredients flourishing on the Croatian island of Korcula by Barbara Unković
   
2. Les silences sauvages by Karin Serres
   
3. N.N. by Gyula Krúdy
   
4. La ballade d'Iza by Magda Szabó
   
5. Mémoires du comte de Comminges by Mme de Tencin
   
6. Le Ghetto intérieur by Santiago H. Amigorena (unfinished)
   
7. Hommes entre eux by Jean-Paul Dubois
   
8. Les vieux fourneaux - tome 1 - Ceux qui restent by Wilfrid Lupano and Paul Cauuet
   
9. Les Vieux Fourneaux - Tome 2 - Bonny and Pierrot by Wilfrid Lupano and Paul Cauuet
   
10. Les vieux fourneaux - tome 3 - Celui qui part by Wilfrid Lupano and Paul Cauuet
    
11. Les vieux fourneaux - tome 4 - La magicienne by Wilfrid Lupano and Paul Cauuet
    
12. Le sang des fleurs by Johanna Sinisalo
    
13. Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class by Owen Jones
    
14. Cumin, Camels, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey by Gary Paul Nabhan
    
15. Vie de ma voisine by Geneviève Brisac
    
16. White Tears by Hari Kunzru
    
17. Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel
    
18. La défense du paradis by Thomas von Steinaecker (unfinished)
    
19. Star ou Psi de Cassiopée : Histoire merveilleuse de l'un des mondes de l'espace - Nature singulière, coutumes, voyages, littérature starienne, poèmes et comédies by Charlemagne Ischir Defontenay (unfinished)
    
20. Bâtir aussi by Ateliers de l'Antémonde (unfinished)
    
21. Bad Blood: A Memoir by Lorna Sage
    
22. Venise gourmande et l'Orient : un métissage culinaire original by Pierrette Chalendar
    
23. Œuvres poétiques by Auguste Lacaussade
    
24. Visa Transit by Nicolas de Crécy
    
25. Mes bien chères soeurs by Chloé Delaume
    
26. Le Fils du soleil, suivi de Le Cavalier du son by Radovan Pavlovski
    
27. Journal du dehors by Annie Ernaux
    
28. Confessions d'une séancière by Ketty Steward
    
29. Cuisine solo-duo by Vincent Amiel
    
30. Thaïlande by Thomas Feller
    
31. Mémoires d'une dame de cour dans la Cité interdite by Yi Jin
    
32. Le Joueur d'échecs by Stefan Zweig
    
33. La mort à Venise: suivi de Tristan: et Le chemin du cimetière by Thomas Mann (unfinished)
    
34. Les Fous de Bassan by Anne Hébert
    
35. Rhapsodie des oubliés by Sofia Aouine
    
36. Atlas de la Chine : Les nouvelles échelles de la puissance by Thierry Sanjuan
    
37. Feast: Food of the Islamic World by Anissa Helou
    
38. Les furtifs by Alain Damasio
    

Original languages of the books I've read this month:

• French: 23
  
• English: 7
  
• Hungarian: 2
  
• Finnish: 1
  
• Macedonian: 1
  
• Chinese: 1
  
• German: 2
  

• Number of female authors this month: 15
  
• Number of male authors this month: 18
  
• Mixed male/female collaborations and mixed-gender anthologies this month: 1 (Bâtir aussi is a collaborative work by by authors who are unnamed and ungendered in the book. I just know that at least one of them is queer and does not want to be gendered because I met them. The whole book is written using French neutral pronouns "iel" and "iels")
  

>87 Dilara86: Cinnamon overdose.
Question - which spice do the french use most?

>91 baswood: Black pepper ? Nothing else - from the spice rack (we use herbs more than spices) - comes close in terms of ubiquity. After that, it's a soupçon of nutmeg in cream dishes and quiche lorraine, a few coriander seeds in pickles, possibly a teaspoon of carraway seeds in choucroute depending on the recipe, a pinch of cumin or paprika here and there. But that's for traditional French food. Many French people - with or without North-African ancestry - eat couscous garni every week or every two weeks and consume merguez and other Maghrebi dishes regurlarly. So maybe the spice used most is actually the blends of spices used in those dishes, such as ras el hanout, or even harissa sauce.

On the sweet side, it's going to be cinnamon, but in small doses - sprinkled on an apple tart, for example. Unless vanilla counts as a spice.

>92 Dilara86: interesting. I am very careful with spices when cooking for my french neighbours. I did risk adding nutmeg and cayenne pepper to some gougères I made recently for an apéros evening - which seemed to be appreciated.

Les vieux fourneaux - tome 1 - Ceux qui restent, Les vieux fourneaux - tome 2 - Bonny et Pierrot, Les Vieux fourneaux - tome 3 - Celui qui part and Les vieux fourneaux - tome 4 - La magicienne (The Old Geezers series) by Wilfrid Lupano (writer) and Paul Cauuet (illustrator)







Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: A village in Quercy (South-West France)
First published in 2014 (first volume)


A friend raved about this series and lent me the first four volumes. The first two are available in English under the title The Old Geezers. I was intrigued by the French title – “Les vieux fourneaux” (literally, the old stoves/furnaces) because it wasn’t an expression I was familiar with. It turns out it from a Georges Brassens song, Le Temps ne fait rien à l'affaire:

"Quand ils sont tout neufs, qu'ils sortent de l'œuf, du cocon,
Tous les jeunes blancs-becs prennent les vieux mecs pour des cons.
Quand ils sont devenus des têtes chenues, des grisons,
Tous les vieux fourneaux prennent les jeunots pour des cons."

There’s an interview with the author (in French) here. Three of the main characters are lefty baby-boomers - grumpy old men with very short fuses. They’re contrary, rude and they most definitely haven’t given up on political activism (and smoking). The fourth main character is a granddaughter who takes after the old guard. The books are funny and political, but they’re not intellectually deep, despite the fact that they were inspired by philosophers Edgar Morin, Michel Serres and Stéphane Hessel. Here’s what Wilfrid Lupano said in the interview :

"Quand on a commencé Les Vieux Fourneaux, Stéphane Hessel venait de publier Indignez-vous!. C’était le succès d’édition du moment. Il avait 91 ans et disait aux jeunes de se choisir un sujet d’indignation et de se bouger. Michel Serres venait de publier Petite Poucette, un ouvrage qui parle de la génération portable, et Edgar Morin La Voie, qui aurait pu devenir le manifeste de la gauche moderne pour la campagne de François Hollande mais a été ignoré - pour le résultat que l’on connaît. Bref, on avait l’impression que ceux qui montraient la voix en terme d’engagement social et environnemental, de foi dans l’avenir et les jeunes, c’était des mecs issus de la gauche qui avaient plus de 90 balais. On a voulu retranscrire cet état d’esprit."

Somehow, despite its success and the film of the same name, the Vieux fourneaux craze had passed me by. I have now read the first four books. I can’t say I was taken with them – I rolled my eyes more than I chuckled at the stories-, but I’ll still be borrowing Book 5 to see how it ends… And I can see how they might appeal to others, from old people who don’t want to grow old gracefully to millenials hoping to change the world, not to forget people who like to read about old men making fools of themselves.

La ballade d'Iza by Magda Szabó, translated by Tibor Tardös, revised by Chantal Philippe and Suzanne Canard





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: Hungarian
Original language: Hungarian
Translated into: French
Location: A small town in the Hungarian Plain and Budapest
First published in 1963


Ettie is a provincial old lady. When her salt-of-the-Earth husband Vince dies, her daughter Iza takes charge and moves her to her flat in Budapest. Everybody agrees that Ettie is so lucky to have such a caring daughter, who’s also a successful doctor in Budapest no less! But the thing is, she’s also incredibly bossy and has no emotional intelligence. Uprooted from all that she knows, Ettie starts to fade away. Szabó is a master of the psychological novel. It was both an uncomfortable read for me – Ettie reminded me of my grandmother’s last years which were definitely not happy – and a comforting read, as I feel I have gained in understanding and empathy.

>95 Dilara86: Nice review, I like your description of the both uncomforable and comforting read.

I keep on seeing Szabo's name appearing in reviews that catch my eye and my bookish interests, I might have to make the leap and read someting by her.
La Porte seems the most famous, have you read it? If so, would you recommand more La ballade d'Iza or La Porte.

>96 raton-liseur: If you're only going to read one book by Magda Szabó, then yes, I'd choose La porte. It's her better-known known novel and it's outstanding. After that, it depends on your tastes. If you like mysteries and stories set in girls' boarding schools (or you still have stuff to work out from your teenage years), you might enjoy Abigaël. If you like psychological novels about older people and family dynamics, then I'd go for La ballade d'Iza (La porte and Rue Katalin would also qualify). If you like childhood memoirs, you could give Le vieux puits a try.

>97 Dilara86: Thanks for the recommandations. It's likely I'll start with La Porte then, although La ballade d'Iza is really tempting. I'll make my final decision at the bookshop, as usual!

Propriété privée by Julia Deck





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: An eco-house in an eco-neighbourhood outside Paris
First published in 2019


This is the last book from my library’s rentrée littéraire selection. It was the one with the longest holds queue despite having the most copies. It’s a short, caustic murder mystery-type novel set in a small street of six eco-houses built in a brown site just outside Paris. It takes to task small, inward-looking communities and satirises the urban, left-leaning middle classes. It’s dark and funny.

Le sang des fleurs (The Blood of Angels) by Johanna Sinisalo, translated by Anne Colin du Terrail





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: Finn
Original language: Finnish
Translated into: French
Location: Finland
First published in 2011 (Finnish), 2013 (French) and 2014 (English)


This is a “pre-apocalyptic” novel set in the Finnish countryside in the near-future, where bees are disappearing and there might be more than the usual (unfortunately) colony collapse disorder at play. The novel is centered on a father, undertaker and beekeeper whose own father runs a meat plant and whose son is an animal rights activist. Thought-provoking and very moving.

Hommes entre eux by Jean-Paul Dubois





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: Toulouse (France), North Bay (Ontario, Canada)
First published in 2007


I first heard of Jean-Paul Dubois back in November when he won the Goncourt for his last novel, Tous les hommes n'habitent pas le monde de la même façon. Cultural radio programme La dispute’s presenters were so enthusiastic about him that I had to try one of his novels. I’ll be reading Tous les homes n’habitent pas le monde de la même façon later this year, when my hold comes through, although I nearly cancelled it after reading Raton-liseur’s review!
Hommes entre eux is a strange beast and has all the makings of a cult novel. The narrator, Paul Hasselbank, is terminally ill Frenchman from Toulouse. He travels to North Bay in Ontario looking for his wife, who left him a few years back and who he hasn’t heard from in six months. The last person who saw her is Floyd Paterson, a loner and a man’s man, who likes to hunt, commune with Nature and watch Aguirre, the Wrath of God. The dying man turns up at his lakeside house right before a blizzard and things start to take a strange turn. This novel was short, the writing was visceral and disturbing, and the ending stayed with me for a long time, as I tried to make sense of it. Was it all a dream? At the same time, I felt removed from the story. The violence, power plays and explorations of masculinity did not grab me: I am probably not Jean-Paul Dubois’s target reader! Which is OK. I don’t regret the short time spent on his novel.

Mémoires du comte de Comminge (The history of the Count de Comminge) by Mme de Tencin





Comminge et Adélaïde au couvent de la Trappe - Fleury François Richard



Comminge ou le Comte de Comminge reconnaissant Adélaïde sous le costume des Trappistes, au moment où on va l’enterrer - Claudius Jacquand


Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: France, the South-West (Gascony) and the Pyrenees especially
First published in 1735 (first translated into English in 1746)


This half-forgotten classic was written by Madame de Tencin, an influential eighteenth-century salonist who also happens to be d’Alembert’s birth mother (she had him out of wedlock). Initially self-published anonymously in The Hague in 1735, it was praised for the purity and elegance of its writing style and it was reedited regularly until the start of the twentieth century. As you can see from the paintings above, it became part of the French cultural landscape for two hundred years and inspired artists. I don’t know why it’s not better-known now. The French text is, of course, in the public domain and available on Wikisource (https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/M%C3%A9moires_du_comte_de_Comminge). It’s quite short: about 60 pages long.

The plot is not terribly original: a young man and a young woman – the comte de Comminge and Adélaïde de Lussan - fall in love, but they come from feuding branches of the same family, and the comte’s father does not agree to the marriage. She is forced to marry someone else, he makes his way back into her life, and although she behaves impeccably, as women always do in this type of novel, and stays faithful to her husband, she is doubted and things take a dramatic turn. There’s bit of excitement, with fighting and lucky escapes! In the end, the comte de Comminge has no choice but to retire to a monastery. I won’t insult you by using spoiler tags to discuss the final twist of a two-hundred-year old novel, especially since the paintings above give it all away… Three years later, he is called to the side of a dying fellow monk. You guessed it: Adélaïde had disguised herself as a man to live closer to her love, and only revealed herself to him on her deathbed.

The eighteenth-century French was a pleasure to read. It was so clear and evocative, I was instantly transported to the book’s time and place. It was like reading a Charles Perrault fairy tale. But at the same time, I could not let go off my modern sensibilities enough to not roll my eyes at the story. I might have a heart of stone, but I could not feel deeply for the characters, which is a shame, as that was clearly Madame de Tencin’s aim and Mémoires du comte de Comminge is supposed to be one of the first psychological novels ever written. There’s also quite a lot of female sacrifice for a novel that’s touted as a precursor to feminist literature. I was happy to have read this book out of interest for history and the history of literature. Had I been looking to lose myself in a story, I would have been disappointed, but obviously, others might feel differently. Oh, and finally, you’re probably thinking that Mémoires du comte de Comminge is quite similar to La Princesse de Clèves, which it is, but in my opinion, it is an easier and shorter read. So, if La princesse de Clèves has defeated you as it has President Sarkozy, but you would like to read a novel written in classical French, Mémoires du comte de Comminge could be a good bet (and it’s free online).

>102 Dilara86: Sounds like fun!
I had the idea from somewhere that all those 18th century French books claiming to be published in the Netherlands were really printed in Paris, but I googled Jean Néaulme and found a couple of plausible-looking academic sources talking about him as someone who really did have a bookshop here in The Hague. Although one of them also said that his name was used for false imprints after 1763. And neither said where in the city he was...

>101 Dilara86: You can imagine I won't read that book... I podcasted La dispute and listened to it after reading the book and can't really understand why they were so unanimously enthousisatic, but I am looking forward to reading what you think about this book. I hope you'll enjoy it more than I did (but kind of hope you will not, I would feel less lonely!).

>102 Dilara86: I am tempted, and I loved the final line of your review. I promised myself I would reread La Princesse de Clèves, just to be one of those people our dear (ex-)president consider loosing their time reading useless books rather than "work more to earn more", but never did. I should start with this one, and then be brave enough to take a leap and read a more substantive book.

Thanks for making me discover this book I had never heard about. Just out of curiosity (if you don't mind me asking), how did you come across this author and book?

>103 thorold: I must say it hadn't occured to me that books said to have been published in the Netherlands could have come from printers actually based in France, but now that you mention it, it would have made sense, from a practical point of view, to have a Dutch address as a front for clandestine local presses...

>105 raton-liseur: Despite the fact that it's a recent discovery - I'm sure of that - I can't remember where I first came across this book and its author. I'll be sure to tell you if I ever remember.

>104 raton-liseur: I'm third in line for Tous les hommes n'habitent pas le monde de la même façon, which means that it might get to me at the end of the month if I'm lucky, in eight weeks if everybody keeps it for the maximum allowed amount of time, or God knows when if someone forgets to return it. I'm amazed at how often that happens!

Rhapsodie des oubliés by Sofia Aouine





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: rue Léon, Barbès, Goutte d’or, Paris (France), Baie de Somme (Northern France)
First published in August 2019


Page 18

“Barbus, daronnes, clandos, vendeurs de rue, et la bande des seins à fleurs avec leurs trucs dessinés dessus. Tous les mecs du quartier les traitaient de putes dans toutes les langues. Et ça balançait des corans et des claquettes, des culottes et des tapis sur leurs têtes. Tout le monde s’est mis à se battre, à se tirer les cheveux.“
/i>

A disappointing read. It’s trying too hard to be too many things at once: La vie devant soi (the Life Before Us) and another handful of novels. Things don’t make sense plot-wise, and the writing is overwrought.

Mes bien chères soeurs by Chloé Delaume





Writer’s gender: Female
Writer’s nationality: French
Original language: French
Translated into: N/A
Location: France, N/A
First published in March 2019


Pages 101-102
Le chant des partisanes (Karaoké remix) (This is a pastiche of Le chant des partisans, a French Résistance song that played on BBC Radio Londres during the war. It is available with English subtitles here. Warnings: the English translation is uninspired and stop at 3:40 if you don’t want to see pictures of hangings. You can go there to read the French and Russian lyrics, and listen to the song performed in French and in Russian by its writer, Anna Marly.)

Copine, entends-tu le pouvoir de ce mot sur nos peines ?
Copine, entends-tu rire ce jour où ta vie vaut la sienne ?
Ohé ! féministes, suffragettes jusqu’auboutistes, c’est l’alarme !
La sororité modifie le goût du sang et des larmes.

Rangez vos canines, être sœurs c’est plus qu’être camarades.
Sortez cisailles, les hashtags qui mitraillent les grillades.
Ohé, harceleurs, priapiques adipeux, courez vite !
Ohé, prédateur, attention petits pourceaux, ça retweete.

C’est nous qui brisons le cristal comme le plafond de verre.
Sororales secousses, neutraliser la frousse, tenancières.
Il y a un pays, des femmes, une utopie et une trêve.
Ici, nous, vois-tu, rivales et séparées, on en crève.

Ici chacune sait ce qu’elle veut, ce qu’elle fait, quelles impasses.
Amies inconnues, ce n’est pas qu’sur Facebook que ça passe.
La sororité, confiance et liens pour contrer la déroute.
Chantez sans canons, désormais, des paroles qui s’écoutent.

This was a short, raw, angry and optimistic pamphlet about feminism, the Me Too movement and what it’s like to live in a misogynistic, patriarchal world. It punches you in the gut and it sends you through a whirlwind of personal memories, thoughts and references that range the gamut from the most vulgar of French popular cultural expressions to high culture. I’m probably in the sweet spot for her references: we’re of the same generation, we watched the same TV programs as children, we listened to the same music as teenagers, we studied the same classics at school or later, and we read the same books. Her allusions, satire and pastiches made me feel cosy and catered-for, but I was very aware that they would go over the head of many readers. Still, the points she makes and her punchy, gutsy and playful writing should sustain them to the last page. Ultimately, I disagree with Chloé Delaume’s views. Although understandable given her personal experience, her blanket condemnation of French men and culture up till now lacks nuance. I think she’s too optimistic that the end of patriarchy is in sight as the older generations die out – we’ve been saying this for the last two hundred years now! I am also not as confident as she is in the magic powers of the Internet. But then, I’m not too fond of emphatic writing in general, which this book definitely is.

Le Fils du soleil, suivi de Le Cavalier du son by Radovan Pavlovski, translated by Ankika Josifovska-Angelkovska, Peter Andonovski and Jean Laugier





Writer’s gender: Male
Writer’s nationality: Macedonian (born in Niš, Serbia, then part of Yugoslavia)
Original language: Macedonian
Translated into: French
Location: Macedonia, Alexander the Great’s empire, N/A
First published in 2003 for the French translation


I was very happy to come across a book translated from the Macedonian language, let alone a poetry collection. The translation was very readable and the poems were varied, moving and clearly very competent. I copied one here, chosen because it was short (it isn’t particularly representative and it wasn’t my favourite).

Le temps se nomme

Ni dates ni années
N’a jamais admis le temps
S’il n’a pas de souvenirs
Encore moins
Connaît l’oubli
Combien de nuits et de jours terribles
En nous sont enterrés avec le soleil
Le temps, lui, a tout son temps
L’enfance n’a que de l’enfance
Debout sur le cercle du temps
De quelque côté que je me tourne
Le temps est tout ce qui se nomme.

It's time to reflect on the past year. I won't be finishing another book before the new year : I've started Les furtifs yesterday and it's a doorstop!

Apart from following Reading Globally's themes, my goals for the year were:

- Read at least one book in the original Spanish and see how I get on. Partially reached. I tried Queremos tanto a Glenda by Julio Cortázar but gave up: I could just not get into it. I've made good progress with the Spanish translation of Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett which I've been reading alongside the English original, but I doubt I'll have finished it by the end of the year, and of course, it's not an original Spanish novel.

- Read at least one book originally written in a language I haven't encountered yet. I did better on this goal. There was Les Poètes de la Méditerranée, but that's cheating because it is an anthology of poems written in every Mediterranean language. Venin by Saneh Sangsuk was my first Thai book. Le jardinier de Sarajevo by Miljenko Jergović was my first book advertised as being written in Bosnian rather than Serbo-Croat. Le rêve d'un Groenlandais by Mathias Storch was my first book in Kalaallisut (Greenlandic). De haute lutte by Ambai was my first Tamil novel, followed by Friday et Friday by Antonythasan Jesuthasan. Le Fils du soleil, suivi de Le Cavalier du son, a collection of poems by Radovan Pavlovski, was my first Macedonian book. Une petite vie by Khosraw Mani was my first Dari (Afghan Persian) novel.

I've been crunching numbers. They are high because I have read less slow-burning non-fiction and a lot more graphic novels and poetry this year. They tend to be quick reads. I have included all of this year's books, even the ones I didn't finish.

This year, I have read 112 female authors, 134 male authors and 16 books written by mixed teams.

Original languages of the books I have read:

1. French 152
   
2. English 41
   
3. Arabic 9
   
4. German 7
   
5. Japanese 6
   
6. Italian 6
   
7. Hungarian 5
   
8. Swedish 4 and 1/5th of a poetry collection
   
9. Chinese 4
   
10. Spanish 3
    
11. Korean 3
    
12. Russian 3
    
13. Mixed, various 2
    
14. Hebrew 2
    
15. Serbian 2
    
16. Tamil 2
    
17. Greek 2
    
18. Czech 2
    
19. Norwegian 1 and 1/5th of a poetry collection
    
20. Finnish 1 and 1/5th of a poetry collection
    
21. Icelandic 1 and 1/5th of a poetry collection
    
22. Turkish 1
    
23. Vietnamese 1
    
24. Portuguese 1
    
25. Bosnian 1
    
26. Flemish 1
    
27. Thai 1
    
28. Dari (Afghan Parsi) 1
    
29. Latin 1
    
30. Albanian 1
    
31. Croatian 1
    
32. Polish 1
    
33. Kalaallisut (Greenlandic) 1
    
34. Macedonian 1
    
35. Danish 1/5th of a poetry collection
    
36. Créole 0,2 (one whole short story in a collection and a smattering of dialogue in short stories written in French)
    
37. Corsican 0.1
    

It was quite a good year for fiction. My favourite reads this year were nearly all novels:

La Tour de guet by Ana María Matute
Mal de pierres by Milena Agus
Masculins singuliers by Éric Holder
La bibliothèque enchantée by Mohammad Rabie
Hayy bin Yaqzân by Ibn Tufayl
Abigaël by Magda Szabó
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
La ballade d'Iza by Magda Szabó

Then:
Frère d'âme: roman by David Diop
Les jardins statuaires by Jacques Abeille
Le Pauvre Christ de Bomba by Mongo Beti
Je n'ai pas eu le temps de bavarder avec toi and La voix de Papageno by Brahim Metiba
Amatka by Karin Tidbeck
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood, despite its inconsistencies

Three autofictions/autobiographies:
Ma mère et moi by Brahim Metiba
La Reine du silence by Marie Nimier
Ton père by Christophe Honoré

And only one non-fiction book:
Nagori : La nostalgie de la saison qui vient de nous quitter by Ryoko Sekiguchi
Followed closely however by:
Discours sur le colonialisme, suivi de : Discours sur la Négritude by Aimé Césaire
Le Ministre est enceinte by Bernard Cerquiglini
Le français est à nous ! : Petit manuel d'émancipation linguistique by Maria Candea and Laélia Véron
And a late entry (I finished it at 4:30 PM on the 31st): Jane Anger, Her Protection of Women by Jane Anger

On the poetry side, nothing grabbed me as much as the books above, but I still really enjoyed all the anthologies (of Mediterran poets, haikus, Nordic poets) I read and:
Œuvres poétiques by Constantin Cavafy
Luck is the Hook by Imtiaz Dharker
Œuvres poétiques by Auguste Lacaussade
Poèmes by Anne Hébert
De la mort sans exagérer by Wisława Szymborska

I read a lot more graphic novels than usual this year - widen your horizons and all that-, but I found most of them trite. The ones I liked best were:
L'Arabe du futur - volume 4 by Riad Sattouf
Les grands espaces by Catherine Meurisse
And a children's book: L'écorce des choses by Cécile Bidault

Cookbooks:
Thés et mets : Subtiles alliances by Lydia Gautier
Feasts by Sabrina Ghayour
Real Fast Indian Food - More Than 100 Simple, Delicious Recipes You Can Cook in Minutes by Mridula Baljekar - shame it's not available on Scribd anymore!
Feast: Food of the Islamic World by Anissa Helou
The Food of Oman: Recipes and Stories from the Gateway to Arabia by Felicia Campbell
ETA: And how could I forget Cumin, Camels, and Caravans: A Spice Odyssey by Gary Paul Nabhan?

Looking at the selection above - and I might have chosen differently on a different day! - my favourite books of the year were originally written in:
French - 19 books
English - 9 books
Arabic - 2
Hungarian - 2
One of each for Spanish, Italian, Swedish, Greek and Polish

There were 19 books written by women and 16 written by men.

That’s a cool breakdown. I definitely want to read more work in translation in the coming year.

>114 lisapeet: So do I! It looks like I read a lot in translation because I listed 35 original languages other than English and French, but it's still a small fraction of my total Read list, compared to all the French and English books I consumed...
Note for next year: Do not place holds for so many Rentrée littéraire novels and books featured on your public library's website. They're not all essential reading, and they'll skew your language stats towards French. Although to be fair, I was more restrained than last year, and I did discovered some very enjoyable books in the process. The French slant also wasn't helped by this year's Reading Globally theme reads. There was the Mediterranean theme, which included Southern French writers and North-African authors writing in French, the Postcolonial Writers on the Colonizers theme, and the Speculative Fiction from around the World theme, which I used to to work on my TBR pile of French SF...
I'll probably read more in English next year, thanks to Reading Globally's Writing from Southern Africa quarter, and because I have started using Scribd.

Jane Anger, Her Protection of Women by Jane Anger





Writer’s gender: likely female
Writer’s nationality: likely British
Original language: English
Translated into: N/A
Location: N/A
First published in 1588



Well, I should never have written that I wasn't going to finish another book before the end of the year, because I just have... I remembered that I had started Jane Anger, Her Protection of Women by Jane Anger ages ago, after reading baswood's review and following the link he provided to the online text (https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/anger/protection/protection.html). In the interest of having a clean end to the year, it is now finished, and I'm very glad I picked it up again because it's a delightful rant about men's hypocrisy written in sixteenth-century English. It's going into my best non-fiction list.

Here’s my genre breakdown for the year.

Non-fiction books: 56, bearing in mind there’s an overlap with cookbooks, of which I’ve read 34. When they contain sizable explanatory texts as well as recipes, I tag them with both terms.

Main categories (some books fit into several):
Non-fiction – history: 15
Non-fiction – sociology: 23
Non-fiction – geography: 2
Non-fiction – politics: 14
Non-fiction – literature: 6
Non-fiction – architecture: 5
Non-fiction – philosophy: 3
Non-fiction – psychology: 2
Non-fiction – anti-racism: 11
Non-fiction – biology: 1
Non-fiction – physics: 2
Non-fiction – food: 12
Non-fiction – feminism: 2
Non-fiction – religion and spirituality: 2
Non-fiction – health: 1
Non-fiction – linguistics: 3

Children’s books: 4

Poetry: 23 – my highest since high school!


Fiction

I read mostly contemporary fiction – too many to give an exact number since I did not tag them as such. As far as I can see, I only read (to the end) 15 books written before the second world war: 2 German, 2 Japanese, 1 Ancien Greek, 1 modern Greek, 3 Arabic, 4 French (including a vegan pamphlet written in 1923!), 1 English, 1 Kalaallisut (Greenlandic). There were also a number of collections and anthologies that featured both contemporary and past authors in many different languages.

Fantasy (including magical realism): 11 – my favourite books were La tour de guet (La torre vigía) by Ana María Matute, and then Les jardins statuaires (a very good find!) by Jacques Abeille, This Census-Taker by the ever-dependably good China Miéville and Le sang des fleurs (The Blood of Angels) by Johanna Sinisalo.
Science-fiction: 11 (with some overlap with the Fantasy tag – I should just tag them SFF and have done with it!) – My favourite that was not also tagged Fantasy was Amatka by Karin Tidbeck.

Comic books, graphic novels/(auto)biographies/travelogues: 28 – After cleaning up my tags and looking closer, I saw that there were more books in that category that I really liked: L’écorce des choses by Cécile Bidault, Savoir-vivre ou mourir and Les grands espaces by Catherine Meurisse,Le visiteur du Sud : Le journal de Monsieur Oh en Corée du Nord : Edition intégrale by Yeong-Jin Oh, Paroles d'honneur by Leïla Slimani, L'Arabe du futur - volume 4 by Riad Sattouf, and Alpha: Abidjan-Gare du Nord by Bessora.

I did not finish 19 books this year, of which 13 novels/short stories collections, 4 non-fiction books, 1 graphic novel and 1 cookbook, which says a lot, as it doesn’t take long to skim one to the end…