Literary rentrée | Ten novels from elsewhere to read this fall

Year in, year out, every fall brings us a few hundred new releases in bookstores among French novels and translations. Here are ten new releases that we can count on to take us completely elsewhere.

Stand upMelissa Da Costa

For several years, the author of All the blue of the sky is one of the biggest bestsellers, alongside Guillaume Musso, Joël Dicker, Marc Levy and Virginie Grimaldi. She will also be at the Montreal Book Fair in November to present this new novel which delves into the intimacy of a couple whose love manages to survive trials, against all odds.

In bookstores

The Ghosts of BrooklynTyriek White

This is a first novel that made a spectacular entrance on the literary scene and allowed this Brooklyn musician to carve out a place for himself among the five young talents of the National Book Award (one of the most prestigious literary distinctions in the United States). Tyriek White describes New York in the shadow of skyscrapers, that of council estates and precarious destinies, with the story of three generations of African-Americans who fight their ghosts in a city that does not want them. Definitely an author to follow in the coming years.

In bookstores

IntermezzoSally Rooney

This highly anticipated fourth novel from the author of Normal People explores the complex relationship between two brothers who are complete opposites and who reunite after their father’s death. The young Irish writer delves once again into her favorite subjects — grief, love, family, relationships, the confusion of feelings, breakups. A pen that we will find with pleasure.

September

The Lost Boys ClubRebecca Lighieri

Behind the pseudonym Rebecca Lighieri, Emmanuelle Bayamack-Tam (winner of the Prix Médicis in 2022 for The thirteenth hour) has already written three dark novels that address very contemporary social issues. The heroine of this one is a 27-year-old young woman who is emblematic of her generation, whose vision of the world is opposed to that of her father. An intriguing novel with two voices.

September

Back to BelfastMichael Magee

Born in 1990 in Belfast, Michael Magee has had great success with this first novel, which is already being translated into a dozen languages. His hero has just graduated, but no future is open to him – and he ends up committing an unforgivable act. In the same way that the Scot Douglas Stuart paints a portrait of the environment in which he grew up, Michael Magee evokes today’s Northern Ireland, with its increasingly poor working class and disoriented youth, against a backdrop of political and religious tensions. To be discovered.

September

Children of the open seaVirginia Tangvald

The woman who was once Jean Leloup’s partner leads a real family investigation around her father, the famous sailor Peter Tangvald. In this story of freedom, wandering and loss, she traces her family – from this father of whom she has no memory and who perished in a shipwreck with her sister in 1991, to her brother, who continued to sail before disappearing at sea in turn. A literary odyssey that takes us across the oceans.

October

Fool’s ParadiseRichard Ford

The author of the excellent Canada continues its cycle of novels around the character of Frank Bascombe who, at 74, is now a widower after having beaten cancer. With nothing left to lose, he takes his son, who suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, on a kitsch road trip across the United States. This journey, filled with colorful characters, tinged with dark humor and irony, thus serves as a pretext to continue to probe our definition of happiness and examine American malaise.

October

MagaliCaryl Férey

Best known for his thrillers, Caryl Férey explores in this story the femicide, in 2021, of a French woman whose body was discovered in a forest not far from the village where he grew up, more than a month after her disappearance. He leads the investigation to try to understand the sequence of events and, above all, so that the life of this anonymous woman is never forgotten.

October

In the evening of AlexandriaAlaa El Aswany

Egyptian Alaa El Aswany, a committed author who became known worldwide for his bestseller The Yacoubian Buildingreturns in this new novel to Alexandria in the late 1950s. It is there that a group of friends meet to remake the world, one drink at a time. But as political and social changes shake the country, they must face the end of an era.

October

My AssassinDaniel Pennac

This is not quite an autobiographical story that the author of the famous Malaussène saga has written here, but rather a portrait of all the real people who have become characters in his tribe. The French writer recounts, among other things, the childhood of the fearsome Pépère, thus opening the doors of his “workshop” to reveal his way of working and his sources of inspiration. A must-read for anyone who has devoured his books.

November