Assise, le soir, après de longues promenades à travers le Jura, sur le canapé d'un salon romantique de pension helvétique où elle passe l'été, née à Neuchâtel d'un père calviniste et suisse et d'une mère catholique et française, mariée à un ingénieur chimiste bernois puis à un paysan éleveur de basse Normandie, veuve deux fois après leur disparition par mort violente, belle encore à l'approche de la cinquantaine, sous le masque de pondération qu'elle s'est, depuis l'enfance, imposé d'offrir aux autres, sinon à elle-même, que cache donc Marguerite Droz ? Et qu'est donc venue chercher ici, dans ces lieux propices à la méditation, cette sensitive ? Cette imaginative fiévreuse, cette passionnée rentrée, n'ayant jamais cessé, au-delà des joies et des chagrins avouables, de cultiver tant d'amours secrètes, insolites (pour une statue, un policier nazi de passage, un jeune Juif de la Chaux-de-Fonds, un officier de cavalerie alémanique) et qui pourrait l'aider à prendre enfin des distances avec elle-même, à se pacifier ? " 

En Normandie, les Mexicains ne courent pas les rues. Ama-ryllis Monceau, l'institutrice de St-Christophe a découvert le sien à Paris. Sanchez est peintre, elle est belle. Trois semaines d'une cour ardente. Ils se marient. Ainsi fut fondée dans les années 30, la famille Sanchez. L'homme a continué à peindre, la femme à enseigner. Trois enfants leur sont nés. C'est en voyant les gens se retourner sur leur groupe insolite, que Carlos, le fils aîné, prend conscience de la singularité de son clan, au milieu des paysans vikings. La tribu des Sanchez est heureuse dans l'atmosphère grisante d'une maison où le père fait triompher l'amour, la fantaisie, le mépris des préjugés. Pourtant les sentiments passionnés qui unissent Amaryllis et Pépito n'arrivent pas toujours à bout des malentendus nés de la confrontation de deux cultures diffé-rentes. Le couple, une fois, est au bord de la rupture. Mais c'est ne pas connaître cet homme et cette femme que de croire qu'ils se trahiront jamais. Campés avec maîtrise, la force des personnages de ce roman les impose d'eux-mêmes.Source : Le Livre de Poche, LGF

t's something that we all feel, but this gentle soul managed to write it down and left it to the world, something between the writer and the reader, falling in and falling out of love and all the sayings and doings in between.

Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrives in Paris from the country to stay with Gabriel, her female-impersonator uncle. All she really wants to do is ride the metro, but finding it shut because of a strike, Zazie looks for other means of amusement and is soon caught up in a comic adventure that becomes wilder and more manic by the minute. In 1960 Queneau's cult classic was made into a hugely successful film by Louis Malle. Packed full of word play and phonetic games, Zazie in the Metro remains as stylish and witty as ever

Nous sommes à Ceylan, dans les années trente, et chez les Ondaatje la moindre réunion de famille devient rocambolesque. Des grands-parents aux petits-neveux, tous multiplient les folies, et leur bonne humeur n'a d'égale que la gravité des catastrophes qu'ils traversent. A partir d'un carnet de bal, de trois histoires d'amour, des souvenirs d'une grand-mère excentrique, Michael Ondaatje explore le passé de sa famille et compose un récit mythique peuplé de personnages endiablés, sortes de demi-dieux vivant au rythme d'une nature exubérante et déchaînée.

Ce livre est si magnifique que j’ai pris mon temps pour le lire. Je me suis délectée de chaque mot, lu et relu lentement pour faire durer le plaisir. J’ai retrouvé là le souffle de vie, l’aspiration au bonheur et le plaisir des choses simples que j’avais tellement aimés dans la trilogie Joséphine Cortès, écrite bien des années plus tard. 

Un homme à distance est également un bel hommage aux livres qui nous construisent. "J’ai appris la vie dans les pages des livres", écrit Kay Bartholdi. Et c’est avec des livres comme cela qu’on apprend le plus. 

The book is cut in 2 parts. The first one flits between a summer vacation of a 17 year old lad in a quaint German village in 1963, and a campaign in Ukraine where 2 young men at the height of their careers are forced to do atrocities of unspeakable kind to the Jews in 1941. Paul Malbreau meets Clara Lafontaine in this quaint village of Kehlstein while spending his summer vacation. In between the chapters, alternating, the spot shares the history between Moritz, a German lieutenant who had succumbed to the ills of the German Nazi campaign in Ukraine and Arthur Lafontaine, the young doctor who has to save his ass off by shedding off sympathy rather than risk being killed. War ills have seeped into their lives, forcing Moritz to go insane after his return to Kehlstein and Arthur, which had grown distant from his family leaving to tend for his roses. While Clara and Paul’s flirtations to each other never materialize (and for us lovelorn guys, hope that for this early, something will blossom out, however cliché it may be,) their friendship continues to the second part of the book.
In the second part of the book, Paul becomes a successful sculptor, marries off a girl and rears children, while Clara becomes a successful war photographer. While their lives entwine, they never end up with each other, and instead, their lives lead to revelations, growing older, wiser, yet knowing the cycle that they had before them. For some odd reason, the sins of the father, as the blurb of the book is never fully eked out, and what remains were the infrequent presence of Clara.

Set in 1761 Paris, this is the first in a series of books featuring Nicolas Le Floch. We first meet Nicolas as a young man, whose guardian, Canon Le Floch, has recently died. Abandoned as a baby twenty two years previously, his godfather, Marquis de Ranreuil, seems to have turned against him – refusing to consider him as a possible husband to his daughter, Isabelle, whom he has loved since childhood. 

When Nicolas is sent to Paris, he is determined to be a success. Monsieur de Sartine, the Lieutenant General of Police, tells Nicolas he is to be trained in the police force, and lodged with Commissioner Lardin. However, when Lardin goes missing, along with some very delicate papers which the King wants returned, he finds himself thrust into an investigation which has huge implications. Nicolas works with Bourdeau to uncover the truth, in a case which involves him investigating the very people he has been sent to live with.

At once highly original and deeply familiar, this enjoyable book takes the form of a diary but, instead of detailing the events of the life of the writer, it chronicles the life of Daniel Pennac's body. It's like the TV show Embarrassing Bodies crossed with The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ - written by a French philosopher.

Childhood is almost all body. Our strange behaviour as adolescents is fuelled by hormones. Our early adulthood is nearly entirely driven by desire. We reproduce. Then our bodies begin to play cruel tricks on us. We get older and older, start falling apart, then die. 

Pennac's diarist is refreshingly open about all of the subjects few of us ever share. Even with our partners. And as the book covers an entire lifetime, we get to explore a great many of life's challenges and joys.

Daniel Pennac is a star in France and Europe but little known here, which is a shame. Diary of a Body has the potential to change this

As tenaciously as the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the boys of the villages of Longevernes and Velrans perpetuate a vendetta of hundreds of years. With the ripping of smocks and the clatter of sabots, missiles and invectives fly--the Longevernes have "flabby balls" and the Velrans "awl have hary asses." Prefatory chapter heading quotations from Rabelais do not justify the publisher's comparison, and the referral to Mark Twain seems altogether undeserved. . . . 

Under the leadership of Lebrac the war goes on from day to day and week to week; as buttons come off, there are some literal rearguard actions as the vanquished emerge with bottoms bared; a closing scene, the treason trial of one of theirs, a cripple, with the punitive reprisals, is quite brutal. But for the most part, this ""classic"" which appeared in France more than thirty years ago is resoundingly dull--and for all its peasant vigor, la guerre n'est pas finie for a long, long time.

Éva is ten when she ends up under the van of Étienne Vollard, a bookseller. The shocking event awakens demons from the childhood of the insomniac bachelor. The lonesome man has always been an outsider and never found happiness or peace, except like Thomas à Kempis, in a corner with a book. He recognizes in the silent, unconscious child a fellow-sufferer in solitude and, overwhelmed with guilt, continues to visit her in the hospital. In between his wanderings in the mountains of La Grande Chartreuse, he talks and reads out for hours to her, fragments and quotes from the numerous books he has read in his life spontaneously bubbling up from his phenomenal memory. As Éva’s troubled mother appears unable to supply the necessary care, Vollard goes through great lengths to revitalize the girl. However Eva’s soul languishes and a tragic denouement seems inevitable.

Machiavelli needs to be looked at as he really was. Hence: Can Machiavelli, who makes the following observations, be Machiavellian as we understand the disparaging term? 1. So it is that to know the nature of a people, one need be a Prince; to know the nature of a Prince, one need to be of the people. 2. If a Prince is not given to vices that make him hated, it is unsusal for his subjects to show their affection for him. 3. Opportunity made Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and others; their virtue domi-nated the opportunity, making their homelands noble and happy. Armed prophets win; the disarmed lose. 4. Without faith and religion, man achieves power but not glory. 5. Prominent citizens want to command and oppress; the populace only wants to be free of oppression. 6. A Prince needs a friendly populace; otherwise in diversity there is no hope. 7. A Prince, who rules as a man of valor, avoids disasters, 8. Nations based on mercenary forces will never be solid or secure. 9. Mercenaries are dangerous because of their cowardice 10. There are two ways to fight: one with laws, the other with force. The first is rightly man’s way; the second, the way of beasts.

the book is a collection of little anecdotes, typically a page or two long, written in an elegantly simple late 19th century French. It is actually a shocking and hilarious autobiographical portrait of a young boy in provincial 19th century France enduring the indifference of his siblings and the sadistic cruelty of his mother.

Comme Céline, Jean Reverzy était " médecin des pauvres". A 40 ans, pressentant sa mort prochaine, il écrit, au retour d'un voyage en Océanie, son premier roman, Le Passage. Celui -ci connait aussitôt un immense succès, mais la gloire ne détourne pas Jean Reverzy de la médecine, car le médecin et l'écrivain vont de pair: l'un et l'autre se mesurent à la mort et y préparent.
Jamais sans doute, le métier de médecin et l'univers de la Polynésie n'ont été décrits avec une compassion aussi lucide et aussi exigeante.

"Paroles" is the beginning of an intense relationship with the inner truth of Life, the naive curiosity of a man walking around and looking at the people, the houses, the changing landscape of a city he identifies with the whole world in an almost pantheistic sense of empathy.

War was over in 1946, after having scattered its load of material and human debris all over the world... layer upon layer.
The city was being enthusiastically rebuilt, but the spiritual wounds of the people were still bleeding: loss, disenchantment, self-abasement, bewilderment. The poet perceives the latent violence permeating the world, a violence that goes far beyond the war and takes the shape of numberless abuses and acts of injustice. "L'Effort humain", Human Effort, is an elegy to the humble people of any time and nationality, men and women struggling to (re)build the world... and dying to be forgotten and replaced ("Chanson dans le sang", Song in Blood).
Prévert's social commitment is not merely part of a political agenda: it's urgent and honest, an impulse from the depth of his soul as well as a declaration of his rational mind. It's not political, it's moral. Human.

Albertine disparue (Albertine Gone) is the title of the sixth volume of Marcel Proust's seven part novel. In the sixth volume of the series fitting seems that Proust's past actions conclude with a fair resolution. The captive is now the fugitive. Like in previous volumes, envy and distrusts eventually reveals unsuspected and unwanted revelations that lead the Narrator to reconcile himself with his melancholy. But unfortunately happiness still running away for him, and the marriage of his once good friends face him against his own misery which he tries to cover with indifference

Asher Lev is a Ladover Hasid who keeps kosher, prays three times a day and believes in the Ribbono Shel Olom, the Master of the Universe. Asher Lev is an artist who is compulsively driven to render the world he sees and feels even when it leads him to blasphemy. In this stirring and often visionary novel, Chaim Potok traces Asher’s passage between these two identities, the one consecrated to God, the other subject only to the imagination.

Asher Lev grows up in a cloistered Hasidic community in postwar Brooklyn, a world suffused by ritual and revolving around a charismatic Rebbe. But in time his gift threatens to estrange him from that world and the parents he adores. As it follows his struggle, My Name Is Asher Lev becomes a luminous portrait of the artist, by turns heartbreaking and exultant, a modern classic

Pierrot Mon Ami, is considered by many to be one of Raymond Queneau's finest achievements, it's a quirky coming-of-age novel concerning a young man's initiation into a world filled with deceit, fraud, and manipulation. From his short-lived job at a Paris amusement park where he helps to raise women's skirts to the delight of an unruly audience, to his frustrated and unsuccessful love of Yvonne, to his failed assignment to care for the tomb of the shadowy Prince Luigi of Poldevia, Pierrot stumbles about, nearly immune to the effects of duplicity.

A short, reflective piece that would be ideal in schools, telling moral lessons and how heroes grow out of the mundane before a child's eyes. Beautifully written in a poetic, first person point of view, the story is told as an adult looking back toward childhood. Let's just say this story, for a change, gives a positive reputation for clowns. A neat twist in sobering circumstances, all is happy and better in the end, as people do sometimes truly grow and thrive from tragedy if they overcome. Rather than an actual story, it is composed an introduction, a life changing scene, and an afterword.

récit tres agréable à lire , drole et pertinent. Je tiens tout particulierement a feliciter le vendeur, qui non seulement a expedié le livre avant la date convenue, mais celui-ci etait emballé avec beaucoup de precautions et de gout, et etait accompagné d un charmant petit mot . Merci à fredtheme

Recipient of the Grand Prix of the Académie Française, Terre des hommes aka  "Wind, Sand and Stars" captures the grandeur, danger, and isolation of flight. Its exciting account of air adventure, combined with lyrical prose and the spirit of a philosopher, makes it one of the most popular works ever written about flying.

Christine married Jean-Luc because she couldn't have Augustin, but at the first opportunity, she sleeps with the man she is really attracted too. Jean-Luc finds out and leaves, but when he breaks and nearly loses a leg, she nurses him back to health with great devotion, they get back together and are very happy for a while. However, she soon resumes her affair, and Jean-Luc throws her out, keeping their son with him, since she is now pregnant with her lover's baby. From that point on, Jean-Luc's behavior becomes more and more erratic. He falls to drinking, squanders his money, and behaves irresponsibly towards his child, who drowns in a pond while looked after by a simpleton. The chapter devoted to the discovery of the toddler's body is one of the strongest in the book. As in other books of that ilk, the villagers are used as a Greek chorus, and Ramuz is very good at describing the attitudes and reactions of a variety of people on the periphery of a tragedy.

François Rabelais holds a unique place in the history of world literature, and no more so than for his extraordinary satirical entertainment Gargantua and Pantagruel. Here the first of these volumes is presented in a new and lively translation. Pantagruel recounts the life a popular giant. From his portentous birth and colorful childhood, to his visit to Paris and his travels through Utopia, and not withstanding his enormous appetite, Pantagruel’s history is told with a breathtaking degree of gaiety and wit. Ingeniously coining new expressions, and with an unashamed obsession with bodily functions, Rabelais blends prose and poetry, the sacred and profound, to offer a heady satire of the religious society of his day. The result is a bawdy and brilliant celebration of life.

Au début, ce fut comme un conte de fées : tout s'y goupillait miraculeusement. Tomber une fille, ramener du fric facile… Il allait se retrouver à la tête d'un empire ! En quelques mois, il était passé d'un boui-boui infâme à des bureaux de société nickel. Oublié le petit voleur, adieu la racaille, bonjour la réussite totale. Pourtant, lui revenaient sans cesse des sentiments bizarres, des pensées troubles. Il se penchait en rêve sur les eaux noires de la défaite. Plus il avançait, plus une voix nasillait à ses oreilles : « Gaston, la gloire et la fortune, t'es sûr que c'est pour aujourd'hui ? » En douze chapitres, Vincent Ravalec fait le tour d'une vie, parcourt la boucle de l'époque, enferme ironiquement un monde pourri et, quand même, formidable.

In the quiet Sussex country town of Kingsmarkham, the daughter of Nigerian physician Raymond Akande is missing. It's probably nothing, says Dr. Akande to his friend and client Chief Inspector Wexford, whose help he enlists.
But the days that follow prove the doctor dreadfully wrong. A young woman is found murdered not Melanie, but the last person to have seen and spoken to her. A second woman's body is discovered, again not Melanie's, but like her, young and black. A third woman turns up beaten and unconscious; like the others, she is of Nigerian origin. As Inspector Wexford's investigation stretches from days into weeks, it becomes his unhappy obligation to counter the hopes of the doctor and his wife. In Wexford's professional opinion, Melanie, like the other young women, has become the victim of a serial killer with a horrifyingly singular objective.

This book tells a story about a young guy who survived WW1. He spent his youth at war and thus did not get to ask himself all the questions young people ask themselves.

There are two sides to this story. The first one tells about Ludwig's everyday life, describes the people he meets in the most hilarious ways, but the point is that this side of the story is aimed at making the reader feel how pointless those daily routines are, how insignificant it all is compared to the second side of the story. Now this part tells one of the oddest love stories I have read about. Ludwig falls for an insane woman, literally insane - she spends her days at a madhouse. At first she really does seem crazy, but as you read, you see more reason in her words and actions than in those of other Werdenbrück town inhabitants.