Not So Foreign Family Problems Fill the Lists The bright blue and red cover of YOU’RE JOKING, MONSIEUR TANNER (l’Olivier), French author Jean-Paul Dubois‘ most recent bestseller, shows a man on hands and knees who’s painted himself into a corner. This is Paul Tanner, a wildlife documentary filmmaker who suddenly inherits the grand family manse,…Continue Reading
Cafés-philo all over France are abuzz with the newly hip notion of “anti-anti-Americanism,” and the headiest homage to contrarian Frenchness comes from Yves Berger, the legendary literary director of Editions Grasset — and a member of the august Conseil Supérieur de la langue française — who has hit the charts with his Dictionary for Lovers…Continue Reading
Women’s Work Poland Gets the Menses, Millás Sizzles Spain, And Hareven Labors for Love in Israel Serotonin levels are plunging this month all over Poland, where the delightfully demented author Janusz Wisniewski comes down with Tense Syndromes (otherwise translated as Premenstrual Syndrome; the original title was Menstruation, but the Warsaw publisher deemed it “too shocking”),…Continue Reading
Sketches of Spain Gala’s Jungle of Love and Aldecoa’s Enigma, Plus Holst’s Uppity Danish Women At the colossal Fnac megastore in Barcelona last month, you had to bushwhack your way past bales of Jean Auel’s The Shelters of Stone — the ubiquitously promoted tome could be had in no less than four separate editions: Catalan,…Continue Reading
Damsels In Distress Calmel in Aquitaine, Hermann Does Damascus, And Norway’s Queen of Crime Druids, troubadours, wenches, and the golden-haired, green-eyed Duchess of Aquitaine make for a rambunctious menagerie who all wind up in Eleanor’s Bed, a first novel that’s had ladies-in-waiting sighing all over France. This medieval coming-of-age story from Mireille Calmel unfolds in…Continue Reading
