Tag Archives: Prix Femina

Auf Wiedersehen: Sum’s the Word, Luxurious Bejeweled Elephants, Of Butterflies and Men

One + one = three in Dutch author and Libris Prize winner Tomas Lieske‘s new novel My Sovereign Love about an artisan of arithmetic, his love interest, and a meddling monarch. Born in The Hague in 1528, Marnix de Veer is a mathematician, architect, and instrument-maker extraordinaire. Also a dabbler in foreign languages, he catches…Continue Reading

Domestic Issues Abroad

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

International Fiction Bestsellers

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

International Fiction Bestsellers

Parisian Pandemonium Vargas Plagues Paris, Orsenna’s French Lessons, And Brouwers Skewers Dutch Boomers The specter of bubonic plague coming down the mail chute rattles all of Paris in an uncannily topical work by the French archaeologist and crime writer Fred Vargas. In the author’s latest novel, Leave Quickly and Return Late (which, incidentally, was written…Continue Reading