16 French Books Available in English Translation

The protagonist is having a normal day when he stumbles on a young man who looks just like his first love. His memories blossom out in Besson’s lyrical writing. He remembers his love affair with Thomas, their attachment, their secretive meetings. Thomas remains withdrawn and detached — class differences separate them, and he knows that one day, Philippe will leave their small-town life behind. Heteronormativity and class come between them. Ultimately, this book’s genius lies in its poetic writing and its ability to convey the longing, grief, yearning, and pain of staying hidden, to the reader.

Content warnings for homophobic language and suicide.

This 2021 release is a feverish story about Paradise, a idyllic family farm where Blanche and her brother are raised by their tough grandmother Emilienne. Teenage Blanche’s fierce love for the land will pull her in one direction as her adoration for ambitious Alexandre pulls her in another. There is something mythic — something eerie — something, perhaps, wrong with Paradise. I read this haunting novel of buried heartbreak and seething rage in one dedicated sitting — Coulon’s superb writing, fierce characters, and short chapters powered me through its final pages.

Content warnings for animal death, domestic abuse, grooming, parental death, self-harm, violence, disordered eating.

Audin is a member of the Oulipo, a French workshop that experiments with language to stretch what it can do as much as possible. In this novel, mathematician Audin explores the lives of French mathematicians — as well as Jewish mathematicians who struggled with discrimination and persecution — over the course of decades, including during the two World Wars. The format shifts wildly throughout its pages, from diary entries to fables to research notes, all coming together. And it has a few little tidbits and gems hidden in its code for those out there who are passionate about math.

Content warnings for persecution, antisemitism, violence.

I haven’t been able to stop talking about Disoriental since I finished it in November 2020. It’s the intergenerational story of the Iranian Sadr family, all told in the whirling mind of queer, tough, punk protagonist Kimiâ as she sits in the waiting room of a Parisian fertility clinic. It’s a family saga told in a web of stories, playing with memory and the twisting knots of having heard a story from many different points of view, without having been there. She’s the daughter of two intellectuals who opposed the regime of the Shah and then of Khomeini, and she fled from Iran with her mother and sisters when young, heading towards Paris. The protagonist’s stories parallel Djavadi’s own, which adds a searing veracity to the tale and tone.

Content warnings for violence, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, political exile, and Islamophobia.

Ndiaye writes a painful book about Rosie Carpe, a young girl who just wanted to survive and find peace, and the story that led to her disheveled, confused arrival in Guadeloupe, pregnant and with her nervous son in tow, looking for brother Lazare. Rosie is painfully innocent, abandoned by her parents in Paris, forced to navigate painfully abusive relationships and scenarios on her own with little help. She’s hoping now that Lazare can help — but instead a Black man named Lagrand greets her at the airport, and he seems to not want to tell her where her brother really is. It’s a shifting, sharp story of confusion and the desperation of one broken woman to find peace.

Content warnings for sexual abuse and exploitation, alcoholism, rape, miscarriage, child neglect and abuse.

When Leduc first came forward with her manuscript, it was heavily censored and resisted by publishers. It was too explicit in its descriptions of female desire and pleasure, and specifically graphic sapphic sex. It left Leduc frustrated: in a world of writers publishing daring texts, this story about two teenage girls exploring each other’s bodies was considered completely unpublishable. Leduc would someday get the acclaim she deserved with autobiography La Batarde, but even then it took years for this work of erotic lesbian fiction to be widely available, and it only became available in English translation in 2015.

Content warnings for homophobia, explicit sex, graphic sex.

In this slim volume, writer and filmmaker Valérie Mréjen writes of a series of absurd deaths, writing about grief and sorrow in ways that are detached and somehow very real as a result. A divorced father stops by his ex-wife’s apartment with their children to pick up clothes, and they find her body in bed. The older daughter grows older and surpasses her mother’s age at death, and as she dreams, remembers, and wonders, Mréjen sprinkles in tiny vignettes of death, as if to try and get at what death is like, at its most broad and yet its most zoomed in.

Content warnings for suicide, sudden family death.

The Wound is a breath-taking, emotional novel about French soldiers fighting in the Algerian War of Independence. We begin in the present, where town drunkard “Woodsmoke” makes a scene — but then we dive back into his time in Algeria, into the doubt, fear, and grief that he experienced. The narrative describes atrocities committed on both sides — shows the realities of a war, the neglect of its veterans, and the shame and trauma they carry from their participation in its fighting. It’s painfully relevant today, a story about occupation and failure to protect people you made promises to.

Content warnings for graphic violence, anti-Arab racism and violence, alcoholism, animal cruelty and death, rape threat, slut-shaming, torture, PTSD.

In part one of Québécois author Brossard’s postmodernist, twisty novel, queer Mélanie chases her freedom by driving across the Arizona desert, fleeing her mother and her mother’s lover Lorna. She is in love with the desert, the horizon, the open air. In part two, in meta-fiction fashion, a woman stumbles on the manuscript of part one, and sets out to try and find its meaning, its origins, so that she can translate it. And in part three, she does translate it: but of course, it isn’t the same as the original, and the differences highlight the complex act of translation and the difficulty of putting life into words.

French-Moroccan lawyer Myriam is returning to work after having children. When Louise comes into her life, she thinks they’re incredibly lucky — she’s the perfect nanny, cleaning their Paris apartment, devoted to the children, staying late, working extra hard. But from page one, you know something that Myriam does not: Louise will end up killing the two children in her care. The unraveling of the story is dark and reveals the dehumanization, class struggle, and power dynamics that are part of how rich parents treat those who work for them. Slimani is a writer to watch, and this mystery/thriller won a slew of awards on its publication.

Content warnings for violence.

Most of you will recognize this one, but I had to include it because for the longest time I didn’t know it was a translated work! Satrapi’s now-iconic memoir of growing up in Iran during the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the Islamic Revolution, and the war with Iraq, remains as compelling and fascinating as the day it came out. Its black-and-white illustrations and vivid stories of growing up and becoming an opinionated, bold teen, make this memoir the household name it is today. It was translated from its original French by Mattias Ripa.

Content warnings for violence, murder, torture, and discussions of sexual assault, political extremism, and religious extremism.