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
What are essential French works?
Hunter Russell
Adam Ortiz
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
Jordan Davis
>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
Isaac Carter
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon
Nathaniel Barnes
Which would you recommend for someone who is learning french?
Cooper Evans
tintin and asterix
Brody Anderson
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
Jack Foster
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
Luke Barnes
>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.
Jayden Thomas
Les Petit Prince est accessible et court si tu cherche quelque chose de simple.