A Summer Reading List from Global Voices French-Language Contributors   · Global Voices
Lova Rakotomalala

“Summer reading” from Nipmuc media center. Public domain
Summer is upon us. It seems that in what has now become a worldwide tradition, a reading list is de rigueur before you step away from all your online devices and return to a more slow-paced type of readings.
If one of your goals for this summer was to get (re)acquainted with Francophone authors, look no further. Without further ado, here are a few book suggestions from our GV Francophone contributors.
Andrew Kowalczuksuggested the following top ten of books originally written in French. The list is a collection of some of the most outstanding opus from (mostly) contemporary Francophone authors. Most of them are also available in English (see links for translations):
Alexandre Dumas – “Le Comte de Monte-Cristo”
Charles Baudelaire – “Les fleurs du mal“
Arthur Rimbaud – “Poésies“
André Gide – “Les faux monnayeurs“
André Breton – “Le surréalisme et la peinture”
Albert Camus – “La chute“
Eugène Ionesco – “Rhinocéros“
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry – “Le petit prince“
Jean-Paul Sartre – “L'être et le néant“
Simone de Beauvoir – “Le deuxième sexe“
Michel Foucault – “L'archéologie du savoir”
Benoît Mandelbrot – “Les objets fractals: Forme, hasard et dimension”
That is already quite a mind-opening reading list to pick from. Yet, if you are yearning for something even more timeless, Jane Ellis also suggested a few classics:
Building on Thalia's list, Alison Mcmillan recommends a few remarkable novels from Asian authors:
Vikram Seth – “A Suitable Boy”
Shashi Tharoor – “The Great Indian Novel”
Salman Rushdie – “Midnight's Children”
Upamanyu Chatterjee – “English, August”
Kiran Desai – “The Inheritance of Loss”
Front cover art for the book “A Suitable Boy.” Fair use
Claire Ulrich also favored “A Suitable Boy” as a must-read. She also suggested some poetry to go with the novels: