Publisher's Synopsis
Here are the literary counterparts to Zidane and Deschamps, to Air and Daft Punk.
Ah, la belle France - brie and baguettes, cafés and calvados, Sartre and Satie, easy existentialism and casual infidelity, chateaux and chic little poodles… Well, yes, that's still part of what France is about, but only part. France is now a bubbling bouillabaisse of cultures, attitudes, faiths, languages and traditions. Also, for the first time since, ooh, the beginning of time, France now puts out some credibly cool pop; it won the World Cup; its film directors are getting less cerebral and more visceral, all the great Theoreticians have been toppled from their pedestals and a political philosopher is no longer the only thing any bright young French thing yearns to be… And all this is being refracted in its literature, which - like its music - has woken from decades of joyless experimentalism to new energy and new subjects.
Here's the crème de la crème - the 15 best writers under 40 not previously known in English.
