Wednesday, August 30, 2017

Ten top books on postwar France

Alex Christofi is a writer and editor living in London. His latest novel, Let Us Be True, is set in 60s Paris. One of his top ten books on postwar France, as shared at the Guardian:
A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter (1967)

This romance in the Burgundy town of Autun may be the only erotic novel ever to have been written where the prose is as good as the sex. (“They lie exhausted, side by side, as if just having beached a great boat.”) But it is overwhelmingly a melancholy novel, tinged with loss. “It is not the great squares of Europe that seem desolate to me,” the narrator writes, “but the myriad small towns closed tight against the traveller, towns as still as the countryside itself.”
Read about another entry on the list.

A Sport and a Pastime is among Chris Killen's top ten novels about lost friendships, Emma Straub's top ten holidays in fiction, Thomas H. Cook's five must reads on the writing life, Adam Ross's favorite books under 200 pages, Lorin Stein's six Paris Review book picks, and Jeff Gordinier's list of five books that will make you question the wisdom of ever falling in love.

--Marshal Zeringue