‘Smoking Kills’ Revels in the Many Joys to Be Found in Death
Antoine Laurain's Smoking Kills is provocative and funny, but its meditations remain consistently mature.
french literature
Triptych the Light Fantastic: Nicole Brossard’s ‘Mauve Desert’
A frustrating, demanding and ultimately fascinating exercise in experimental fiction, Mauve Desert is the story of one adolescent’s life colliding with the emotional landscapes of others’.
‘Melville: A Novel’ and Its ‘Foreign Companion’
Something of a paean to Herman Melville and Moby Dick, just reading Jean Giono's writing for its own sake is both different from what you might expect -- and delightful.
Modiano’s ‘Villa Triste’ and the Dull Flâneur
The protagonist in Patrick Modiano's Villa Triste is a monomaniacal flâneur in world shrunk to a few predictable details.
Consciousness and Liberation in Victor Hugo’s ‘Les Misérables’
Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables is a celebrated classic on the human condition that engages the reader wholly while forever altering their perspective.