Literary return | Ten French novels to read this winter

After an autumn teeming with literary novelties, this winter season promises to be even more fruitful for French novelists, in this presidential election year. Here are 10 titles you shouldn’t miss in the next three months.

Laila Maalouf
The Press

An honorable exit, by Eric Vuillard

After a foray into the heart of the Second World War, the winner of the Goncourt Prize for The agenda (2017) plunges us into the war in Indochina. He denounces colonial capitalism by depicting, through memorable scenes, the complex tangle of interests that made this conflict one of the longest in modern history. And with his incredible sense of storytelling, he leads us to reflect on the conflicts that persist to this day.

Actes Sud, 208 pages, January

Glen Afric, by Karine Giebel

Twelfth title for this author translated all over the world and whose books have sold more than 2 million copies. This psychological thriller explores difference and friendship when they meet the worst, immersing us in the story of a young boy who is the victim of bullying and discrimination on a daily basis, simply because he is not like others. A novel that promises to be rich in strong emotions.

Plon, 768 pages, January

Paris-Briancon, by Philippe Besson

On board a night train, a dozen passengers who did not know each other are brought together in an imposed camera that pushes them to open up in all sincerity and to confide in intimate secrets. They don’t know it yet, but some will never arrive at their destination with the first light of dawn. A suspense that promises to be formidable and which recalls the value of the present moment and chance encounters, as well as the fragility of our lives.

Julliard, 208 pages, January

Number two, by David Foenkinos

The novelist who knew how to move us and captivate us with works like Charlotte or The Henry Pick Mystery examines the fate of a boy who could have become world famous… if he hadn’t come second in the auditions to play the role of Harry Potter in the cinema. With the sensitivity and all the finesse of his pen, he thus probes the meaning that one can give to one’s life when one is constantly confronted with what one could have lived.

Gallimard, 240 pages, February

The perfect girl, by Nathalie Azoulai

When a brilliant mathematician and mother suddenly ends her life at the age of 46, her longtime friend decides to investigate the reasons that may have pushed her to suicide. The drama takes him down the path of the past and their friendship. This learning novel by the author of Titus did not like Berenice (Prix Médicis in 2015) examines what nourishes personal and professional ambitions, especially when you are a woman.

POL, 320 pages, February

Porca Miseria, by Tonino Benacquista

Back to basics for Tonino Benacquista, who tells here the story of his parents, who arrived from Italy in the Parisian suburbs of the 1950s. The only one of his siblings to be born in France, he grew up in the shadow of a father, factory worker, who drowns his bitterness in alcohol and a mother who suffers from this exile. While discovering French culture and language, he developed a passion for writing that would be life-saving.

Gallimard, 208 pages, February

A dam against the Atlantic, by Frédéric Beigbeder

Change of scenery for the author ofA French novel, the ex-Parisian dandy having confided to having written this new title in Cap Ferret, on the Atlantic coast of France. Facing the ocean, he puts down on paper his reflections on writing, loneliness and the fragile artistic quest. An autobiographical tale, this novel, already critically acclaimed in France, sails through the mists of the past with melancholy and a style, it is said, that makes it one of his most remarkable.

Grasset, 272 pages, February

The big world, by Pierre Lemaitre

A profusion of picturesque characters rub shoulders in this interwar fresco signed by the author ofgoodbye up there (Goncourt prize in 2013). Among many others, a whistleblower, a lost teenager, an ambitious journalist and an incognito actress take us to the era of the postwar boom through several love stories… and a few murders.

Calmann-Lévy, 592 pages, March

Last name, by Constance Debre

When her father died in 2020, the author of love me Tender looks back on this childhood that she hated, between a mother victim of an overdose when she was 16 years old and a father suffering from various addictions. “I will never understand why we attach so much importance to the only stage of life when we don’t choose anything. It’s when it ends that it all begins. If things were done well, at eighteen you would forget everything, you would never see your parents again, and you would change your name, ”she writes.

Flammarion, 192 pages, March

the kid, by Véronique Olmi

Those who were knocked down by Bakhita find here the intense writing of the novelist, who paints the heartbreaking portrait of the tragic childhood of a boy, born after the First World War in the poor neighborhoods of Paris. A poor child then a pupil of the State, he experienced the prison for children, the penal colony and the violence of the adult world before discovering music in a France carried by the hope of the Popular Front.

Albin Michel, 304 pages, March