Best of
French-Literature

2017

A Day with Claude Monet in Giverny


Adrien Goetz - 2017
    A Day With Claude Monet in Giverny

A Second Life


Bob Williams - 2017
    In the summer of 1943, John Thomas enlists in the American army to get away from his incredibly uncomfortable home life. Escaping a rushed wedding , however, comes at no small cost. Less than six months after enlisting, John is dropped behind enemy lines, and being shot at by German soldiers. Fortunately, his life is saved by a French resistance fighter, who sacrifices himself for John. Afraid of being identified as an American soldier, John trades clothes with the dead Frenchman, assuming his identity. Now he must survive against all odds in Nazi-occupied France with a dangerous new identity, and no way of contacting the army, or his home.

Love in a Time of Hate: The Story of Magda and André Trocmé and the Village That Said No to the Nazis


Hanna Schott - 2017
    At great risk to their own lives, the TrocmEs led efforts in Le Chambon-sur-Lignon to hide more than three thousand Jewish children and adults who were fleeing the Nazis. In this astonishing story of courage, romance, and resistance, learn what prompted AndrE and Magda to risk everything for the sake of strangers who showed up at their door. Building on the story told in Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed, German journalist Hanna Schott portrays a vivid story of resisting evil and sheltering refugees with striking resonance for today.

Dash for Dunkirk


Denis Caron - 2017
     May 1940: Royal Air Force pilot Harry Fitzgerald is one of millions of heroic Allied troops fighting against Nazi Germany. In the pitched heat of battle over the skies of Northern France, Fitzgerald is shot down by an enemy plane and captured. Miraculously, he escapes certain death but must make his way back to the Allied evacuation at Dunkirk to get back home. However, Fitzgerald is in the middle of a warzone. At a chateau turned hospital, he encounters two of his wounded comrades. Too sick to reach Dunkirk by themselves, they helplessly lie in wait as the German army advances. Fitzgerald knows he must save them, and with the assistance of the French nurse Solange, the refugees attempt to reach Dunkirk-before the Nazis can reach them. It’s a life-or-death mission through dangerous territory where nothing is guaranteed. In Dash for Dunkirk, authors Denis Caron and Fran Connor explore a world where loyalty and bravery face off against an unforgiving enemy. Bound together by duty and honor, war heroes push themselves to the limit through refugee-crowded streets, mechanical setbacks and enemy attacks. Will they reach safe harbor, or will the ultimate evil finally prevail? Praise for Dash for Dunkirk > "A wildly entertaining, action packed story not only about the reality of war, but also of loyalty, friendship, and romance. A must read! - Jordan Ebare, Avid Reader & Historical Fiction Enthusiast

The Frail Soul and Other stories


Camille Mauclair - 2017
    They will tell you that, but do not believe them; I have pronounced that word in order to destroy in you immediately the striking impression that it produces. Those people are wicked; they were my friends once, but now they spy on me and say perfidious things about me, because they are jealous. And I shall tell you with what reason: they are jealous of not having understood their soul as well as me. There are people who cannot see and who wish ill on others because of that; but not everyone can sense things in the same way, can they, Monsieur? One must be reasonable."Camille Mauclair’s Les Clefs d’or, originally published in 1897, is one of the most significant Symbolist prose collections of the fin de siècle. The present volume, The Frail Soul and Other Stories, contains eleven pieces from this masterwork, brilliantly translated into English for the first time by Brian Stableford.

A Small Revolution


Boum Boum - 2017
    Florence is a young orphan in a city-state ruled by a dictator. A revolution is being organised to overthrow the government, and Florence desperately wants to be part of it - even if she doesn't fully understand what it implies. She will, however, lead her own personal small revolution.

After the Roundup: Escape and Survival in Hitler's France


Joseph Weismann - 2017
    After being held for five days in appalling conditions in the Vélodrome d'Hiver stadium, Joseph and his family were transported by cattle car to the Beaune-la-Rolande internment camp and brutally separated: all the adults and most of the children were transported on to Auschwitz and certain death, but 1,000 children were left behind to wait for a later train. The French guards told the children left behind that they would soon be reunited with their parents, but Joseph and his new friend, Joe Kogan, chose to risk everything in a daring escape attempt. After eluding the guards and crawling under razor-sharp barbed wire, Joseph found freedom. But how would he survive the rest of the war in Nazi-occupied France and build a life for himself? His problems had just begun.Until he was 80, Joseph Weismann kept his story to himself, giving only the slightest hints of it to his wife and three children. Simone Veil, lawyer, politician, President of the European Parliament, and member of the Constitutional Council of France—herself a survivor of Auschwitz—urged him to tell his story. In the original French version of this book and in Roselyne Bosch's 2010 film La Rafle, Joseph shares his compelling and terrifying story of the Roundup of the Vél' d'Hiv and his escape. Now, for the first time in English, Joseph tells the rest of his dramatic story in After the Roundup.