Seventy-four-year-old Jules Lacour—a maître at Paris-Sorbonne, cellist, widower, veteran of the war in Algeria, and child of the Holocaust—must find a balance between his strong obligations to the past and the attractions and beauties of life and love in the present.In the midst of what should be an effulgent time of life—days bright with music, family, rowing on the Seine—Jules is confronted headlong and all at once by a series of challenges to his principles, livelihood, and home, forcing him to grapple with his complex past and find a way forward. He risks fraud to save his terminally ill infant grandson, matches wits with a renegade insurance investigator, is drawn into an act of savage violence, and falls deeply, excitingly in love with a young cellist a third his age. Against the backdrop of an exquisite and knowing vision of Paris and the way it can uniquely shape a life, he forges a denouement that is staggering in its humanity, elegance, and truth.In the intoxicating beauty of its prose and emotional amplitude of its storytelling, Mark Helprin’s Paris in the Present Tense is a soaring achievement, a deep, dizzying look at a life through the purifying lenses of art and memory.

    Three siblings, three very different people leading very different lives, find themselves face to face with new occupants of their city, and none of them can guess what the occupation has in store for them, and how it will change their lives once and for all. Giselle Legrand, a renowned novelist and a socialite, encounters an unannounced guest in her apartment – a newly arrived chief of the Gestapo, Sturmbannführer Dr. Karl Wünsche, who is intended to billet there and who soon starts making rather unwelcome changes in Giselle’s lifestyle. Strong-willed and defiant, Giselle gets involved with one of the first Resistance cells, refusing to submit to the newly established authority despite the developing relationship between the two. Kamille Blanchard, a new widow of the war left alone with a small daughter, is dreading the approaching army. However, she never expected that she could find love in the arms of an officer, who appears at her door as soon as the German army marches in. But will Kamille be able to trust a former enemy when he has to choose between his feelings and the duty for his country? Marcel Legrand, a former history student and a deserter, fearing the capture by the Germans has no other choice than ask for the help from the ones he used to fear and avoid – the mysterious communists, who call for an uprising and freeing their country from the Nazi plague. Soon, the fates of all three siblings will become intertwined in a dangerous knot, all of them, fighting for the same goal: a liberated France.

    And in their midst travels Madeleine, the dreamer, who is trying to make sense of her own metamorphosis as she leaves home, joins a gypsy circus, and falls into an unexpected triangle of desire and love.

    The city it evokes isn’t the Paris of tourists but of local people."—The New York Times"Fabre is a genius of these nuanced, interior moments ... The story Fabre tells is that of every one of us: looking for meaning in the mundane, moving through our lives, our interactions, as if through the fabric of a dream ... How do we live? it asks to consider. And: What does our existence mean?"—Los Angeles Times"Guys Like Me is a short, arresting tale that ...not only offers keen insights into the mind of its middle-aged protagonist, but also provides the reader with a unique tour of what everyday life in the low-key suburbs of Paris must truly be like."—Typographical Era"Readers will take pleasure in this well-told tale with a satisfying ending."––Publishers Weekly"The setting may be Paris, but it’s not the Paris of grand avenues and pricey cafés. In fact, Fabre’s hero is a recognizable everyman, from any country."—Library JournalA smile like a soft flash of light . . . travels through this moving novel and tells, in words that are muted and profoundly humane, of life as it is."—Le Monde"Fabre speaks to us of luck and misfortune, of the accidents that make a man or defeat him. He talks about our ordinary disappointments and our small moments of calm. Fabre is the discreet megaphone of the man in the crowd."—Elle"In this novel one finds the intimate geography of an author who lays bare the essence of Paris and its outskirts."—La Quinzaine littéraireDominique Fabre, born in Paris and a lifelong resident of the city, exposes the shadowy, anonymous lives of many who inhabit the French capital. In this quiet, subdued tale, a middle-aged office worker, divorced and alienated from his only son, meets up with two childhood friends who are similarly adrift, without passions or prospects. He's looking for a second act to his mournful life, seeking the harbor of love and a true connection with his son. Set in palpably real Paris streets that feel miles away from the City of Light, Guys Like Me is a stirring novel of regret and absence, yet not without a glimmer of hope.Dominique Fabre, born in 1960, writes about people living on society's margins. He is a lifelong resident of Paris, France. His previous novel, The Waitress Was New, was also translated into English.

    Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young, provincial engineer charged by the king with demolishing it.At first Baratte sees this as a chance to clear the burden of history, a fitting task for a modern man of reason. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own.

    It is a masterpiece from one of the world's most innovative writers.

    And business is brisk at The Suicide Shop. Run by the Tuvache family for generations, the shop offers an amazing variety of ways to end it all, with something to fit every budget. The Tuvaches go mournfully about their business, taking pride in the morbid service they provide. Until the youngest member of the family threatens to destroy their contented misery by confronting them with something they ve never encountered before: a love of life.

    The eight stories in this collection, his first to be published in English, represent some of his best writing and most imaginative storylines: from the love story between Balthazar, wealthy and successful author, and Odette, cashier at a supermarket, to the tale of a barefooted princess; from the moving story of a group of female prisoners in a Soviet gulag to the entertaining portrait of a perennially disgruntled perfectionist. Here are eight contemporary fables, populated by a cast of extravagant and affecting characters, about people in search of happiness. Behind each story lies a simple, if elusive, truth: happiness is often right in front of our eyes, though we may frequently be blind to it.

    Uses essays and an interview to document the theories of Lacan that resulted in his expulsion from the International Psychoanalytic Association."

    Unlike the friends she makes at school, Paula strives to understand the specifics of what she's painting--replicating a wood's essence or a marble's wear requires method, technique, and talent, she finds, but also something else: craftsmanship. She resolutely chooses the painstaking demands of craft over the abstraction of high art.With the attention of a documentary filmmaker, de Kerangal follows Paula's apprenticeship, punctuated by brushstrokes, hard work, sleepless nights, sore muscles, and long, festive evenings. After completing her studies at the Institute, Paula continues to practice her art in Paris, in Moscow, then in Italy on the sets of great films, all as if rehearsing for a grand finale: at a job working on Lascaux IV, a facsimile reproduction of the world's most famous paleolithic cave art and the apotheosis of human cultural expression.An enchanted, atmospheric, and highly aesthetic coming-of-age novel, Painting Time is an intimate and unsparing exploration of craft, inspiration, and the contours of the contemporary art world. As she did in her acclaimed novels The Heart and The Cook, Maylis de Kerangal unravels a tightly wound professional world to reveal the beauty within.

    From the war crimes tribunal in Bosnia to social issues such as poverty and AIDS; from the state of Iraq to the world’s contrasting reactions to Princess Diana’s death and the starkly brutal political murders that occurred at the same time; from a tear-gas attack on the subway to minute interactions with a clerk in a store: Ernaux’s thought-provoking observations map the world’s fleeting and lasting impressions on the shape of inner life.

    Resolved as she’s been to childlessness, she begins to warm to the idea of motherhood, even with a partner who is increasingly absent. But a devastating turn of events takes the decision out of her hands in a way she could never have predicted.Her familiar world torn apart, Jane feels forced to leave her old life behind. She resigns from her job, cuts all ties with friends and family and moves to a place where no one will find her. Isolated, she feels she has finally succeeded in leaving her world.Yet when a young girl disappears, prompting a high-profile police investigation, Jane is drawn in. Convinced that the person at the heart of the case is much closer to her new community than anyone realises, she has to make a decision to either stay hidden or bring to light a shocking truth.

    Everywhere, outsider politicians rail against ‘the elite’.Yet, with a few notable exceptions, the populist mood has benefited reactionaries rather than reformers. The status quo might be in crisis, but the emerging voices are those of hate and violence. Where is the progressive alternative?In Trigger Warnings, Jeff Sparrow sympathetically but critically examines key progressive ideas. How does a billionaire position himself as anti-elitist? Are the culture wars worth fighting? What's at stake in the battles over political correctness? Should progressives defend it — and, if so, how?Sparrow traces the evolution of the Left and Right to explain the origins of this strange evolution, untangling some of the thorniest controversies of our time and arguing that the future needn't only belong to nihilists and bigots.

    Cela sera pour nous une attitude intérieure, mieux : une vigilance, ou mieux encore, une sorte d'enveloppe mentale au mitan de laquelle se bâtira notre monde en pleine conscience du monde.» Publié en 1989, cet éloge de l'identité créole, cette quête lyrique «d'une pensée plus fertile, d'une expression plus juste, d'une esthétique plus vraie», fonde un art poétique qui devait très vite, dans une illustration magnifique, donner des œuvres importantes : Raphaël Confiant a reçu le prix Novembre pour Eau de Café (1991), Patrick Chamoiseau le prix Goncourt pour Texaco (1992). "Neither Europeans, nor Africans, nor Asians, we proclaim ourselves to be Creoles. For us this will be a state of mind, or, rather, a state of vigilance, or, better still, a sort of mental envelope within which we will build our world, in full awareness of the world." Published in 1989, this hymn to the Creole identity, this lyrical quest "for a more fertile way of thinking, for a more accurate means of expression, and for a more genuine aesthetics", laid the foundations of a poetic art that was very quickly, and brilliantly, to produce major works : Raphaël Confiant was awarded the prix Novembre for Eau de Café (1991), and Patrick Chamoiseau received the prix Goncourt for Tewaco (1992).

    Utterly compelling, brilliantly written, You Deserve Nothing is a captivating tale about teachers and students, of moral uncertainties and the coming of adulthood. It heralds the arrival of a brilliant new voice in fiction.