Born in 1908, the philosopher, novelist, and essayist was 39 when she arrived in New York. She had not yet published her renowned feminist work The Second Sex (1949), but had written three novels, including She Came to Stay, and two essays. Invited by the French cultural services to give a series of conferences at American universities, she spent four...
This is your new reality: You are confined at home for the foreseeable future. Take advantage of this time to read. France-Amerique has compiled a list of 10 books in French, novels, essays on economy or history, graphic novels, and even a coffee-table book on French cheese! Some bookstores offer curbside delivery, and others, like Albertine in New York, made ordering...
We have heard of officers Lewis and Clark and their expedition across the Rockies in 1804-1806. But who remembers Toussaint Charbonneau, their French-speaking guide? Or Pierre Gambie, an interpreter working with the Timucua tribe in Florida during the 1560s? America’s French past has been hidden, according to historian Gilles Havard, research director at the CNRS and author of a book...
Six years after the publication of the 800-page bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, in which he defended increased taxation on higher incomes to reduce inequalities, French economist and writer Thomas Piketty is back with a new subversive and even bigger work. Weighing in at 1,104 pages — two pounds of paper! — Capital and Ideology was published in France...
After 27 years working in finance in New York, Frenchman Philippe Labaune has reconnected with his biggest passion, comic books. He is curating the first European comics exhibition in America at the Danese/Corey gallery from February 28 through March 14. The fifty-something has a relaxed, artistic look — stubble, sideburns, and XXL eyeglasses — as he welcomes us into his...
The following portraits are of artists, designers, writers, diplomats, and actors. Half are French, half are American. And all of them are in love! In celebration of Valentine’s Day, France-Amérique has taken a closer look at ten legendary French-American couples whose passionate or thwarted romances have gone down in 20th-century history. Juliette Gréco & Miles Davis Miles Davis could well have...
In her first novel, to be published in the U.S. on February 4, Belgian writer Adeline Dieudonné portrays a young girl struggling with her tyrannical father, a big-game hunter with a fascination for bloodshed. Awarded the Prix Renaudot des Lycéens in 2018, Real Life reveals an author with a singular perspective blending unease with dark humor. In the chamber of...
In 1990, the Quebecer journalist was the only person to condemn the acts of pedophilia committed by Gabriel Matzneff. The successful French writer was an idol of the Parisian intelligentsia who used his attraction to young boys and girls as a major inspiration for his books. After being insulted by her French colleagues, Denise Bombardier has become a heroine for...
In Disturbance, the French writer and journalist describes his slow reconstruction after being severely wounded in the terrorist attack against newspaper Charlie Hebdo. A deeply moving account the author will present in the U.S. from January 23-31. On January 7, 2015, two men armed with assault rifles entered the offices of satirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo and opened fire on...
The French cultural world has been shaken to its core by the sexual misdemeanors of director Roman Polanski and the admissions of pedophilia by writer Gabriel Matzneff. Both men considered that their talent put them above the law and the common norms of decency in our societies. Victims are now speaking out. While their predators saw them as muses, they...
French writer and historian Chantal Thomas moved to New York at the age of 30 in 1976. She lived in the East Village, a bohemian, immigrant neighborhood where everyone wanted to be a poet, and discovered what it truly meant to be free. She recounts this defining experience in East Village Blues. France-Amérique: What do you remember most about New...
New York-based French photographer Jean-Pierre Laffont took pictures of the biggest stars between the 1960s and the 1980s, including Charles Aznavour, Françoise Hardy, Yves Montand, Line Renaud, Alain Delon, Charlie Chaplin, and Alfred Hitchcock. He was given carte blanche for these images, which are now compiled in a coffee-table book published in France by Les Editions de la Martinière. "Let...
The French writer published Sérotonine last January at the age of 62. His latest work, which was recently translated in English and published in the U.S., offers another take on his favorite character, the depressed white male. While less political than Submission, the new novel with a print run of 320,000 copies made the front pages in France, despite the...
With a dozen novels, short stories, and essays to his name, Jean-Paul Dubois has created a profoundly human body of work inspired by his experience in America, where he worked as a correspondent for Le Nouvel Observateur for 15 years. His latest novel, Tous les hommes n’habitent pas le monde de la même façon, won France’s top literary honor, the...
Ninety years after her death, long-forgotten American dancer Isadora Duncan is now back in the spotlight. Franco-American actress Lily-Rose Depp played her in the movie The Dancer three years ago, and she is now the lead character in a graphic novel published in France by Dargaud in 2017 and translated into English this week by SelfMadeHero. Isadora retraces the fanciful...
As Julian Jackson insists in the preface of his biography, published by Harvard University Press in 2018 and translated in French by Seuil, De Gaulle is “everywhere” in modern France, its undisputed hero. This claim, like some other confident statements in the book, may strike a reader as both narrowly true and what a French thinker might call metaphysically false. His...
French author Jean-Baptiste Del Amo won the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman for Une éducation libertine in 2008, and in 2016 published Règne animal, a denunciation of the violent treatment of animals. Driven by lyrical, organic writing, it will be released in English in the United States on September 10 as Animalia. Rarely does a book stimulate all the senses...
From Abondance in Haute-Savoie and Valençay in Berry to Corsican Brocciu and Munster from the Vosges, artisan cheesemaker Dominique Bouchait presents 45 iconic French cheeses in a coffee-table book published by Rizzoli. A mouth-watering work filled with anecdotes and practical advice. “How could you possibly govern a country in which there are 246 varieties of cheese?” exclaimed Charles de Gaulle....
Anticipating the 45th anniversary of Philippe Petit’s incredible tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in New York, the New Directions publishing house has rereleased his book, On the High Wire, a practical, poetic little work translated into English by New York writer Paul Auster. Philippe Petit sitting down is a sad sight to behold. He usually inspires images of a...
John von Sothen is an American columnist who lives in Paris, where he covers entertainment and society issues for French Vanity Fair. He moved there after meeting his wife, Anaïs, in a café in Brooklyn. They now have two kids who, with Anaïs, are featured throughout his first book, Monsieur Mediocre, which is ultimately a love letter to France — to...
It should have been a celebration of French language and literature; instead it kindled a controversy. Last month’s national book fair, Livre Paris, was rocked by the organizers’ decision to highlight la littérature “Young Adult” (rather than jeune adulte) through a series of equally ill-named events. Say hello to la Bookroom, le Photobooth, le Bookquizz, and even un Brainsto (presumably...
