A French Book Reading Resource

[Nogon]

Recently the International Booker Prize's longlist was announced. 3 of the 13 books were translated from the French:

Laurent Mauvignier - Histoires de la nuit
Maryse Condé - L'Évangile du nouveau monde
Gauz - Debout-paye

The Stockholm library has all three of them. I borrowed the first two and put a hold on the third one.
I guess I won't read Mauvignier's book. While the premise sounds quite good, it's a chunker of 600+ pages and the first sentence ends half-way down the second page . I don't think that my French is up to that, and as the library doesn't have any (for me) readable translation and I don't want to buy one, parallel reading is not an option.
Condé's book is much shorter (280 pages), and there is a Swedish translation, so I'll give it a try as soon as I've finished Dumas' Monte-Cristo. I've read several of Condé's books in translation and liked them, so I guess I'll like even this one.

[Carmody]

One thing I definitely don't read is books where

the first sentence ends half-way down the second page .

Maybe that is why I had trouble with Proust....

[rdearman]

One thing I definitely don't read is books where

the first sentence ends half-way down the second page .

Maybe that is why I had trouble with Proust....

Actually, I think Proust ended his first sentence somewhere on page 4 ...

[Carmody]

Book Review Part II of La petite fille de Monsieur Linh by Philippe Claudel

It is always on my second reading that I get so very much out of a book.

This is one very special book that I can not say enough about and do not want to talk too much about for fear of spoiling it for readers. Suffice to say that it is a short beautifully crafted book that many will ignore and I am so lucky to have been given by a neighbor.

I confess one of the joys of the book was that it did not require lots of look ups in the dictionary. It is simply written with a slow pacing and lovely ending that I had not expected. I believe it can be read by readers of all ages and is definitely something to savor.

Not all French 20th century authors are on a downer and this author proves it.

B1/B2
8/10

[jeffers]

Book Review Part II of La petite fille de Monsieur Linh by Philippe Claudel

Thank you for this recommendation. I looked it up on Amazon and as the kindle edition was just £1.49 I bought it immediately. I intend to pick this up when I finish my current read (an even shorter book: Le Petit Nicolas, c'est Noël!).

Silly question, but how many pages is the actual book? Looking on different listings about the book I'm getting wildly different page numbering.