The year 2020 will forever be known as the year of Covid, the virus that devastated lives and economies throughout the world. On an infinitely more modest scale, for Parisian intellectuals, those well-connected writers, editors, and critics at ease on radio and television, 2020 was also a plague year, one which caused no deaths, but which seriously undermined a longstanding,...

America, with its clarities and contradictions, has always fascinated French writers. But the number of books published in the last ten years shows a renewed interested in l'Amérique, as this brief sampling of novels can attest. The Francophone world might have been puzzled by Jimmy Carter, astonished by Ronald Reagan, annoyed by George W.H. Bush, flummoxed by Bill Clinton, and...

After winning the 2017 Prix Goncourt for The Order of the Day, Eric Vuillard published The War of the Poor in France last year, recounting the civil uprising that accompanied the 16th-century Protestant Reformation in Germany. This dense, incisive work available in English since November 3 does justice to the memory of the oppressed and shines a light on our...

Everyone needs a Rockefeller. Even France, even Versailles! This stubborn gem of French art was restored to its former glory by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his wife Abby during the 1920s. Dozens of American philanthropists have since followed in their footsteps and contributed to the restoration of one of the best-known and most-visited buildings on the planet. Last year...

An insolent, resilient prostitute has her life turned upside down when she meets a young director. Published in France in 2018 and in the United States on September 15, 2020, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth is the first novel from a young Moroccan writer. She has her section of sidewalk, her regular clients, a small bedroom she shares with her...

A key figure in the fight against discrimination and for civil rights in the United States, African-American novelist James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924. Fleeing racism in America, he arrived in Paris in 1948. France was where he wrote his most famous works, such as Notes of a Native Son (1955), Giovanni’s Room (1956) and Just Above My Head...

Writing under the pen name of Genêt, Janet Flanner (1892-1978) was the daughter of a Quaker from Indianapolis who spent fifty years brilliantly portraying Parisian life in her "Letters from Paris" for the New Yorker. Swept up in the politics of the 1930s, she gradually abandoned her neutral stance and invented a new form of journalism. She was forced to...

Melissa Clark was celebrating the release of her latest book, "Dinner in French," when lockdown began in New York City. Since then, the "New York Times" food writer and author of 43 cookbooks (including one written with French chef Daniel Boulud) has spread her love of French cuisine through online cooking demos, live videos on Instagram, and simple recipes tailored...

Cécile David-Weill is the author of three novels, including "The Suitors," a comedy of manners about French high society. In "Parents Under the Influence," recently translated from French and published in the United States, the French-American mother of three tackles accepted ideas about raising children. She shows how we are subconsciously influenced by how our parents raised us, with often...

Awarded the 2018 Prix Goncourt, "And Their Children After Them" follows a handful of young people between 1992 and 1998 in a French region hit by deindustrialization. Nicolas Mathieu’s second novel, published in English in the United States on April 7, is a vast social epic offering a masterful portrait of a forgotten France. In the hot summer sun of Lorraine...

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...