Candide is the story of a gentle man who, though pummeled and slapped in every direction by fate, clings desperately to the belief that he lives in "the best of all possible worlds." On the surface a …
This new translation of The Princesse de Clèves also includes two shorter works also attributed to Mme de Lafayette, The Princesse de Montpensier and The Comtesse de Tende.
Before succumbing to the insanity that ravaged his later life, Guy de Maupassant established a reputation as France's preeminent short story writer, an artist whose cynical and macabre visions paralle…
J'ai voulu y croire, j'ai voulu rêver que le royaume de la littérature m'accueillerait comme n'importe lequel des orphelins qui y trouvent refuge, mais même à travers l'art, on ne peut pas sortir vain…
In this verse translation of Perceval; or, The Story of the Grail , Ruth Harwood Cline restores to life the thematically crucial Arthurian tale of the education of a knight in his search for the Holy …
Patrick Modiano opens Dora Bruder by telling how in 1988 he stumbled across an ad in the personal columns of the New Year's Eve 1941 edition of Paris Soir. Placed by the parents of a 15-year-old Jewis…
The Wild Ass's Skin is Honoré de Balzac's 1831 novel that tells the story of a young man, Raphaël de Valentin, who discovers a piece of shagreen, in this case a rough untanned piece of a wild ass's sk…
Antigone was originally produced in Paris in 1942, when France was occupied and part of Hitler's Europe. The play depicts an authoritarian regime which mirrors the predicament of the French people of …
"'The sweetness of her glance - or rather, my evil star already in its ascendant and drawing me to my ruin - did not allow me to hesitate for a moment...'" "So begins the story of Manon Lescaut, a tal…
