A SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 2022

'Beautiful and deep ... a sumptuous treat for any book lover' The Independent

'There is so much to discover in these stories - both history and food for short story lovers everywhere' Irish Times

A major new celebration of the French short story across the twentieth century

The short story has a rich tradition in French literature. This feast of an anthology celebrates its most famous practitioners, as well as newly translated writers ready for rediscovery. Here are fables, puzzles, fairy tales, war stories and family histories, testing and expanding the boundaries of the form. They are stories about the self and the other, the centre and the periphery, experimental and existential, real and surreal.

The second volume takes the reader through the tumultuous twentieth century in the company of writers including Simone de Beauvoir and Maryse Condé, Patrick Modiano and Virginie Despentes, covering world wars, revolutions, and the horrors of the motorway service station. Along the way we meet electronic brains, she-wolves, a sadistic Cinderella, ancestors, infidels, dissatisfied housewives and lonely ambassadors, all clamouring to be heard. Funny, devastating and fresh at every turn, this is the place to start for lovers of French literature, new and old.

Edited and with an introduction by Patrick McGuinness, academic, writer and translator.

Introduction
Green Sealing Wax / Colette
Woman of the Wolf / Renée Vivien
The Grass Snake / Charles-Albert Cingria
The Disappearance of Honoré Subrac / Guillaume Apollinaire
The Upright Piano / Jean de La Ville de Mirmont
Cinderella, the Humble and Haughty Child / Claude Cahun
What I Saw / Emmanuel Bove
The Man Who Walked Through Walls / Marcel Aymé
A Tale for Your Shaping / Raymond Queneau
The Man Who Loved Nereids / Marguerite Yourcenar
Sunday / Irène Nemirovsky
Sarzan / Birago Diop
A Nail, a Rose / Madeleine Bourdouxhe
The Madness of the Day / Maurice Blanchot
Monologue / Simone de Beauvoir
The Sow / Thomas Owen
The Offensive / Henri Thomas
The Boa / Marguerite Duras
The Adam Affair / Béatrix Beck
Danger from the Classics / Boris Vian
The Hunters' Café / Daniel Boulanger
The Execution / Jacques Sternberg
Mahmoud Fall / Ousmane Sembène
The Finest Story in the World / Annie Saumont
Eve / Jacqueline Harpman
The Unknown Visitor / Françoise Sagan
The Garden / Monique Wittig
The Winter Joumey / Georges Perec
There Is No Exile / Assia Djebar
Family Portrait / Maryse Condé
Women of Algiers, Women of Shame / Leïla Sebbar
The Hat / Patrick Modiano
The Voice / Boualem Sansal
Youth, Suburb of Life / Didier Daeninckx
Portrait Of Saxl / Gilles Ortlieb
A Man's Secrets / Hervé Guibert
The Melancholy Ambassador / Ananda Devi
The Goldfish / Christian Garcin
Looking Inwards on the Autobahn / Charles Dantzig
Revelation / Marie Ndiaye
Hairs on Me / Virginie Despentes