Books from France — The Book Roads

Anne Serre

Some people remain impossible to understand, no matter how deeply we love them. In this intimate, unconventional novel, an unnamed narrator recounts his lifelong friendship with Fanny, a brilliant, rebellious, and deeply troubled woman whose inner world remains beyond his grasp. Bound to her by affection and concern, he witnesses her struggle with profound psychological difficulties, moving between moments of hope and periods of despair. Yet Fanny refuses to be reduced to her suffering: she is unpredictable, spirited, and fiercely individual. Told through brief, lyrical scenes, the novel explores the fragile boundaries between love and helplessness, understanding and mystery. Written in the wake of the death of Serre’s younger sister, this moving work becomes both a tribute to a life cut short and a meditation on grief, memory, and the limits of our ability to truly know another person.

2008

Nausea

Jean-Paul Sartre

A fascinating existentialist novel, written in the form of a journal, about a historian who moves to a small port in northern France to research a biography he is intending to write. Whilst there his senses become dulled and he becomes increasingly disgusted by his own existence, finding no solace with friends or a woman he begins an affair with.

1938