What are essential French works?

What are essential French works?

Going on holiday there for 5 weeks and I want to immerse myself in French literary culture for a couple of months prior

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Les Misérables and Notre-Dame de Paris, Victor Hugo
Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire (poetry)
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
Le Rouge et le Noir, Stendhal
Le Comte de Monte Christo and Les Trois Mousquetaires, Alexandre Dumas
Bel-Ami, Guy de Maupassant
Candide, Voltaire
Voyage au Bout de la Nuit, Céline
Germinal, Emile Zola (I hated it, but it's a French classic)
Le Père Goriot, Honoré de Balzac (probably the most overrated French writer)
A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, Marcel Proust (extremely long book !)
Les Fables, Jean de la Fontaine (don't read if you have read Aesop)
Some Molière if you like theatre (Dom Juan is his most famous work, but imo none of his plays really stand out, they are all good)
Le Cid, Corneille

>Corneille and not Racine
>Balzac being overrated
>not recommanding Les illusions Perdues instead of Goriot
But other than that, pretty fair list. It lacks of XXth century novels though.
Some colonial stuff
>Un barrage contre le pacifique drom Marguerite Duras
A little scifi too
>Ravage, from Barjavel
And some WWII for good mesure
>La place de l'étoile, from Modiano

Gargantua and Pantagruel
Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon

Which would you recommend for someone who is learning french?

tintin and asterix

Alexandre Dumas is not too difficult from what I remember, but its kinda dates French. I'd go with the classics from Camus, like La Peste and L'étranger

Alphonse Daudet, Letters from my windmill, is absolutely lovely and not hard at all. Short stories about peasants and such from the heart of the Provence

>Which would you recommend for someone who is learning french?
None if your level is insufficient, all of them if your level is sufficient.
You could try something short, like Un Coeur Simple (Flaubert), Boule de Suif (Maupassant) or Claude Gueux (Hugo), to see if your level in French is enough.
Otherwise, try reading something easier, like Jules Verne, L'Etranger, or even children's books (or some "bandes dessinées").
If you have a kindle, you have a quicker access to definitions and translations, it might help you.

Les Petit Prince est accessible et court si tu cherche quelque chose de simple.