Dr Tony Shaw

Dominique Fabre's  Fantômes  is of course about visions, although these are the protagonist Edgar's own visions, springs of life...

Laurent Mauvignier's  Une Légère blessure (lit 'A Slight Wound') is a play, or more specifically a monologue by an unnamed w...

Bascoulard is an enormous book in more ways than one: this hardback (49 euros and well worth it) won't fit onto the average bookshel...

After the war, after months in the military hospital, Braine returns to 'normality', at least to his family, his wife Lily, his ...

As I write, Alice Zeniter's fifth novel L'Art de perdre  is among the eight novels chosen in the second selection for the Prix Go...

Sorj Chalandon's Profession du père is a staggering work, so powerful that indeed it would scarcely be possible to imagine it as a w...

Many books aren't worth reading, let alone worth reading more than once. Jean Echenoz's books, however, well deserve to be re-re...

À l'abri de rien , I can't help thinking, is one of Olivier Adam's best novels. We have a family in chaos, we have a (female)...

Éric Holder's Mademoiselle Chambon  (which I reviewed below) is about a kind of mutual sexual (but physically unexpressed) revelation...

Without going into the details of the other seven short stories here, La Roue  is well titled, as the first story, 'La Roue', i...

On the face of it, nothing much happens in 174 pages, but then this is Christian Oster: much psychologising over anything said or done, ...

Hector Bianciotti (1930–2012) was born in Argentina and was a film actor, a journalist, a writer and an academic who took on French na...

Jeanne Bourin (1922–2003) (née Mondot), was a historical novelist who returned to the Catholic faith at the age of forty. She had a...

' Quand verrai-je ma fin du monde ? Que votre Volonté soit faite etnon la mienne. Mais je vourdrais semer des oiseaux dans ceux ...

Józef Czapski (1896–1993) was one of the officers to survive the Katyń massacre, and was a fourth founder of Kultura: another exile l...

Zofia Hertz (1911–2003) was the first Polish woman to become a lawyer. She met Jerzy Giedroyc in 1933 at the Bureau de la culture, de ...

I showed a photo of a plaque dedicated to Jerzy Giedroyc (1906–2000) a few posts below, and now I discover him in the Cimetière du Mes...

Rémi lives in Paris with his wife Isabelle and daughter Louise, and is a collector of photos. This novel weaves in and out of Rémi's ...

'Jerzy GIEDROYC 1906–2000 Fondateur de « Kultura » revue politique polonaise – et de l'Institut Littéraire a vécu et t...

Cécile Aubry (1928–2010) was a novelist, screen writer, and an actor most remembered for her TV series success 'Belle et Sébastien...

Michel Audiard (1920–85) was a screen writer, a film director, and a novelist. Sometimes called a right-wing anarchist, one of his gre...

Albert (or Albin) Kazimirski de Biberstein (1808–87), of French nationality but born in Poland, was an Arabic-speaking orientalist who...

Ariane Chemin works for Le Monde , and this book involves the secret marriage of diplomat and (amusingly fraudulent) two-times winning Go...

J.-H. Rosny aîné was the pseudonym of Joseph Henri Honoré Boex (1856–1940), a French author of Belgian origin who is considered one of...

Anna Langfus (1920 – 1966) won the prix Goncourt in 1962 (for Les Bagages de sable ), and this is one of the few Goncourt graves I...

Émile de Girardin (1806–81) was the founder of the paper La Presse , and, with his rival Armand Dutacq ( Le Siècle ) was responsible f...

Actor Jeanne Moreau (born 1928) only died on 31 July 2017. I, a lover of her films, particularly Truffaut's Jules et Jim in which...

The writer of 124 plays, Sacha Guitry was also an actor and a film director.

'LE POÈTE ET LE CHANSONNIER ARISTIDE BRUANT EST MORT DANS CETTE MAISON LE 12 FÉVRIER 1925' 17 rue Christiani.

Poet and singer Bernard Dimey is commemorated in this plaque in rue Germain Pilon. He spent fourteen years with painter and sculptor Y...

Before reading – indeed before knowing the existence of – the novel on which the movie is based, I'd seen that film. And I loved it. ...

Bernard-Marie Koltès (1948–89) died of AIDS three years after the publication of this play,  Dans la solitude des champs de coton (trans....