This month's selection will explore the spectrum of French culture - from romance and gallantry, to strikes and revolution - and delve into the darker depths of contemporary African politics.

In La France galante (PUF,2008), Alain Viala explores a large and deep aesthetic current which runs through the France of the Ancient Regime. Through a simple and generous narration, an original research revisits entire trails of the history of literature and culture. In replacing a multitude of works in their contexts, from Molière to Fragonard, passing by Mme de La Fayette, Marivaux, Montesquieu or Rousseau, and a multitude of social practices of the salons, the Court, and provincial towns, we relive the ways of thinking and feeling of the time. For the more modern man, Guide des jolies femmes de Paris by Pierre-Louis Colin (Robert Laffont, 2008). For the first time, a precise investigation attempts to divulge the long-awaiting information: where to find the pretty women of Paris. Quarter by quarter, season by season, young or less young, wise or debauched, this complete guide leads you to encounters with the women of Paris, and points out where you can discover their innumerable charms. On a deeper level, Marie-Dominique Lelièvre(Denoël, 2008) in Sagan à toute allure, through a kaleidoscopic fusing of secret documents, emotions and revelations, creates the portrait of an endearing and fragile woman. Vibrant icon whose deliciously scandalous anticonformism and inspirational lifestyle have embodied the dreams of several generations since the war, Françoise Sagan resides in our imagination.

Moving into the less romantic arena of politics, in Demandons l'impossible: Le roman-feuilleton de Mai 68 (Panama, 2008) by Hervé Hamon is somewhere between “Good bye Lenin!” and Armistead Maupin, the entertaining account of disturbances, from which we have never recovered. April 1968. France is bored with itself, as they say. This won’t last. Suddenly, without warning, a new social crisis erupts. The greatest strike in the history of the country, and much more than this: a rupture in the closeness of people. In Le jour où mon père s'est tu (Seuil, 2008), Virginie Linhart offers an insight into what it was like to grow up with revolutionary parents. She is the daughter of Robert Linhart, founder of the Pro-Chinese movement in France, and author of L'Établi. He is one of the most significant figures of 1968. Unfortunately, he is also one of that year's most scarred figures. On route to rediscovering his old comrades, Virginie discovered their children. Through their memories, it's her old childhood which emerges (see “focus on” portrait).

Caryl Férey in Zulu (Gallimard, 2008), opens a window on South Africa. As a child Ali Neuman ran away from the Bantoustan of KwaZulu to escape the Inkatha militia, at war with the ANC, so illegal. Even his mother, the only survivor of the family, doesn’t know what they have done to him...Today chief of the criminal police of Cape Town, Neuman has to cope with two major curses: violence and AIDs, of which the country, the first African democracy, breaks all the records. In Koli Jean Bofane in Mathématiques congolaises (Actes Sud, 2008) introduces us to Célio, orphan since one of the wars which ravaged the country. Célio keeps a school book, discovered in the bag of his father murdered at random by a runaway. It’s thanks to the theorems and definitions that Célio Mathématik hopes to influence his destiny, of which he feels he is only the puppet. With humour and seriousness, In Koli Jean Bofane describes, from a pen as ascerbic as it is exotique, his characters, and sets Congolise scenes which the reader appropriates quickly because he smells the streets, pulsates to the rhythm of the music and the images delievred with fairness and enormous empathy.

Bonne Lecture!

The Book Office London
Rachel Page, Sophie Moreau and Paul Fournel.