Literary Fiction

All countries Afghanistan Algeria Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bangladesh Barbados Belgium Benin Bosnia and Herzegovina Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Canada Central African Republic Chile China Colombia Congo, Democratic Republic Costa Rica Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) Croatia Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Dominica Dominican Republic Egypt El Salvador Estonia Ethiopia France Germany Ghana Greece Hungary Iceland India Iran Iraq Ireland Italy Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Latvia Lebanon Libya Lithuania Madagascar Mexico Moldova Morocco Myanmar Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria North Korea North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Russia Rwanda Saint Kitts and Nevis Saudi Arabia Senegal Singapore South Korea Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Türkiye Uganda United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uzbekistan Vietnam Zambia

Newest first Oldest first

The Green Shutters

The Green Shutters

Georges Simenon

What remains of a man when fame, success, and the fearsome reputation he has built can no longer protect him from himself? Émile Maugin is a celebrated French actor who has spent his life commanding attention, intimidating those around him, and escaping his troubles through alcohol. But shortly before his sixtieth birthday, a devastating medical diagnosis forces him to confront his mortality. As memories of his impoverished childhood, failed relationships, and estranged son resurface, Maugin begins to question the life he has constructed. Beneath his arrogance lies a man haunted by a longing for something he has never truly possessed: the security and warmth of an ordinary family home. With Simenon’s characteristic psychological insight, this haunting novel explores the loneliness behind celebrity, the wounds inherited from childhood, and the painful distance between the person we present to the world and the person we really are.

I Who Have Never Known Men

I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman

I Who Have Never Known Men follows an unnamed young woman imprisoned underground with thirty-nine other women. Guarded by silent male soldiers, the women live in a confined space, deprived of privacy, freedom, and meaningful knowledge of the outside world. Unlike her fellow prisoners, who remember their lives before captivity, the narrator has no memories of the world beyond the prison and has never experienced ordinary human relationships. When an unexpected event allows the women to escape, they emerge into an unfamiliar landscape that appears almost entirely devoid of human life. Forced to survive together, they search for answers about their captivity and the fate of humanity, but the world offers few explanations. As time passes, the narrator struggles to understand concepts such as love, sexuality, memory, and death without having experienced them in the ways others have. Blending dystopian fiction with philosophical reflection, Harpman’s novel explores freedom, loneliness, human nature, and what it means to be human when society and its inherited knowledge have disappeared.

We Were Forbidden

We Were Forbidden

Jacqueline Harpman

We Were Forbidden is a collection of three previously untranslated stories exploring defiance, oppression, and the struggle for personal freedom. In The Ardennes Forest, a woman and her fellow survivors wander through a mysterious woodland after an unexplained war, forbidden from leaving its boundaries or stopping their endless march. In The Outcast, a teenage girl attending a French school in 1940s Casablanca is punished for questioning the beliefs and political ideas she is expected to accept. In The Broom Cupboard, a young woman trapped in a loveless marriage begins to question the expectations governing her intimate life and imagine alternatives to her circumstances. Although the stories unfold in very different settings, each portrays a woman confronting rules imposed by external authorities or social conventions. Through unsettling scenarios, psychological insight, and understated prose, Harpman examines how obedience becomes ingrained and how individuals begin to resist it. The collection explores the tension between conformity and independence, revealing the quiet but powerful ways people challenge the boundaries placed around their lives.