Does anyone else enjoy reading French writers and literature?

I know it's more of a faff but I find the Reverso app much more useful than the kindle dictionary. Keep at it though, writers tend to use the same expressions over and over so it does get quicker and easier.

Must admit I read one Joel Dicker (the Affair of Harry someone) and absolutely hated it, but then we all like different things!

Not only do l like French literature, my favourite English-language writers are often Francophiles. Oscar Wilde certainly was, and so was Aldous Huxley. In fact, Huxley was so steeped in French literature that I think of him as Anglo-French rather than English-British. He constantly alludes to French writers, and his essays are full of quotations from French poetry and prose. He also seems very French in his style - urbane and elegant, with a lightness of touch.

For those interested in literary trivia, Aldous Huxley taught George Orwell French at Eton. Funny to think that the two men who wrote the greatest dystopian novels of the 20th-century (Brave New World and 1984) were teacher and student in the same classroom.

Agree re Annie Ernaux - she's great

It doesn't help when the kindle dictionary translation just says vulgar! I do wish Americans could be less squeamish; they have an abundance of comparable vulgarities.

I ADORE Annie Ernaux. Nothing in her oeuvre disappoints

@cassiatwenty I have enjoyed all Joel Dicker's previous novels but read them in English translations. This one is taking forever to publication. Not due until September this year. Plus he always writes complex plots. I can often guess what he's telling us, and am still missing big pointers and that is mostly because I can't read it as a native speaker. I read a few pages at a time now, unless on holiday with time and energy to check every word that's unfamiliar. Thrillers seem to be particularly tough to read in other languages.

My French is serviceable rather than perfect, but I've been reading L'Affaire Alaska Saunders in the original while I wait for the English translation but I am plodding through it, with the help of the Kindle's translation dictionary. However, it's often too idiomatic/slangy for complete success.

And Albert Camus: L'Etranger.

Hello! I try to read a book in French every few weeks. 'Thérèse Desqueroux' was the first book I read as an undergraduate. I must read it again. Thanks for the suggestions mentioned. I'll list the better ones that I read over the past while.

Françoise Sagan: Bonjour Tristesse, Un Certain Sourire, Aimez-Vous Brahms?

Emmanuel Carrère: L'Adversaire.

Victoria Mas: Le Bal des Folles

Antoine Laurain: Le Chapeau de Mitterrand

Leïla Slimani: Chanson Douce

Maurice LeBlanc: Toutes Les Aventures d'Arsène Lupin

Annie Ernaux: Les Années (also read this in translation!)

Madame Bovary: Gustave Flaubert

Maigret: Georges Simenon

Romain Gary: La Promesse de l'Aube.

I used to read classic French literature extensively during my uni years: Stenhal, Dumas, Zola, Hugo, Flaubert, Romain Rolland, Balzac, George Sand etc.
Years ago I enjoyed Elsa Triolet (Les Amants d'Avignon), and would love to find it to re-read.
In the last few years I read several books by Antoine Laurain (heavily promoted by The Gallic press). Some are more entertaining (Vintage 1954), some are tedious and pretentious (The red notebook).
Other modern writers I can think of - Tatiana de Rosnay.
Andrei Makine - just beautiful.

I read in French but mainly classics like Madame Bovary and some Zola. I tried Notre Dame de Paris but it was too hard - too much cathedral vocab! I have a De Vigan on the tbr pile at the moment and I'm looking forward to the Choderlos de Laclos readalong! My dh likes Houellebecq but he is a bit of a sexist arse so no surprise there.

Thanks to this thread I am now reading Shame by Annie Ernaux. I've never read anything by her before and with two small children I haven't read anything good for a long time, so thank you @cassiatwenty

My degree was in French a bazillion years ago.

Le Grand Meaulnes is bewitching (with a sad origin story — the only novel of a man killed in the first month of WW1 in his 20s, whose body was only identified in the 1990s), but it’s possible that it’s the kind of romantic, wistful novel you might need to have first read in your teens. I know there are lots of translations into English (under several different titles, because the title is kind of untranslatable), but I have never read it in English.

Yes. I'm a bit of a Francophile. One of my big regrets in life is that I didn't do French A-Level. My French is OKish, but I'm entirely self-taught and don't seem able to get beyond a certain point, no matter how hard I try. I am wading through the first volume of Proust atm, using a parallel text.

A couple of French novels I'd recommend:

Huysman: A Rebors about a misanthropic French aristocrat, named Des Esseintes, who withdraws from society. He is also an aesthete, and this is the novel that Dorian becomes obsessed with in Wilde's Dorian Gray. It is also Bruce Robinson's favourite book. I believe he based the character Withnail (in the film Withnail and I) on Des Esseintes.

Nemrovsky: Suite Francaise. Though my French is pretty wretched, I was able to get through this with a dictionary. Apparently, she planned to write an epic, and this was going to be the first volume. Such a shame that she never got to do so.

I’m a huge Mauriac fan, though I haven’t read Thérèse D since my undergraduate days — I really like Ernaux, too. I can’t get on with Houellbecq. I liked Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes, and some Fred Vargas, but I think my favourite French novelists are Stendhal Flaubert, Proust, Colette and Duras, and maybe my favourite novel in French of all time is Le Grand Meaulnes. DH has a sentimental liking for Pagnol.

Ive never got on with Balzac.

I really liked Therese Desqueyroux too.

Watching as I’ll be moving back to France in the next couple of years and this time I want to learn to speak the language better! I watch all the French films and tv stuff.

I recommend Michel Bussi and here for other recommendations 😃