“I had loved her madly! Why does one love? Why does one love? How queer it is to see only one being in the world, to have only one thought in one’s mind, only one desire in the heart, and only one name on the lips; a name which comes up continually, which rises like […]
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Besieged Paris was in the throes of famine. Even the sparrows on the roofs and the rats in the sewers were growing scarce. People were eating anything they could get. As Monsieur Morissot, watchmaker by profession and idler for the nonce, was strolling along the boulevard one bright January morning, his hands in his trousers […]
In Rue Las Cases it was as quiet as during the height of summer, and every open window was screened by a yellow blind. The fine weather had returned: it was the first Sunday of spring, a warm and restless day that took people out of their houses and out of the city. The sky […]
I haven’t had any news. It’s been almost eight years. At first, I had high hopes. I couldn’t imagine that she’d disappeared forever. She would come back. One day, I would hear her voice in the stairwell, and she’d come in and say, What a story, if I’d known, I would’ve stayed in bed this […]
Only after a few episodes did I notice him. He was trying to force the door to a rundown house at the corner of a derelict street. He was too far away to pick out his features, but his yellow parka made a blot on the background. In the foreground, Marion and Detective Burns were […]
In periods of boredom, time turns its back on existence and we stand outside ourselves. (CIORAN, Entretiens) It was a forced entry of light. The waves of hostile winter sun spilled over the linoleum. And the uselessness of this light hurt the girls’ eyes. The perfectly blue sky was an invitation to suicide. “Ugh…,” […]
In Montmartre, on the fourth floor of number 75b Rue Orchampt, there once lived a fine fellow named Dutilleul who had the remarkable gift of being able to pass through walls with perfect ease. He wore a pince-nez and a small black goatee and he worked as a level-three clerk in the Registration Ministry. In […]
Marcel Schwob (1867–1905) was a scholar of startling breadth and an incomparable storyteller. A secret influence on generations of writers, from Guillaume Apollinaire and Jorge Luis Borges to Roberto Bolaño, Schwob was as versed in the street slang of medieval thieves as he was in the poetry of Walt Whitman. His allegiances were to Rabelais and François […]
Jules Gabriel Verne (February 8, 1828 – March 24, 1905) was a French author, regarded as a pioneer of the science-fiction genre. His contribution to what latter has become “speculative fiction” was enormous, such major works as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), A Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1873) to […]
Honoré de Balzac was born in 1799 in Tours, France. Growing up to the fall of Napoleon, he witnessed the harsh consequences it had on French society. Although he was designated by his family to become a lawyer, Balzac wrote feverishly throughout his life, composing dozens of novels, novellas, and short stories, which together he […]
Mathias Énard is a French writer. He was born in France in 1972, and visited, traveled and lived in various Arab-Muslim countries, including Lebanon, Syria and Iran. He studied Persian and Arabic, and in 2003 he settled in Barcelona, where he serves as an Arabic lecturer at the university. He has published nine books, which […]
Véronique Bizot is a French writer. She was born in Paris in 1958. Bizot published two collections of short stories, Les Sangliers (2005) and Les Jardiniers (2008). Her first novel, My Coronation (2010), won the Lilas Prize and the Grand Prize from SGDL, the writers’ association in France.
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