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Literature in French

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Alien Hearts By Guy de Maupassant Translated from the French and with a preface by Richard Howard Maupassant's last completed novel is the story of three lovers bound by bitterness and infatuation. Richard Howard's new English translation of this complex and brooding psychological novel reveals the final, unexpected flowering of the great French realist's art. Price: $10.50 (25% off)

No Tomorrow By Vivant Denon Translated from the French by Lydia Davis Introduction by Peter Brooks "I was desperately in love with the comtesse de —. I was twenty years old and I was naive. She deceived me, I got angry, she left me. I was naive, I missed her. I was twenty years old." So begins this seductive tale of seduction and the endless ambiguities of desire. Price: $9.71 (25% off)

Chaos and Night By Henry de Montherlant Translated from the French by Terence Kilmartin Introduction by Gary Indiana Don Celestino, an old anarchist still bitter about Spanish civil war, reluctantly returns to Spain after decades of exile in France. But instead of the heroic confrontation with the past he hopes for, he finds a relentlessly modern and commercialized country, one utterly unconcerned with its history. Price: $11.96 (25% off)

Defeat By Philippe-Paul de Ségur Translated from the French by J. David Townsend Introduction by Mark Danner Ségur's eye-witness account of what remains one of the greatest military disasters of all time is a masterpiece of military history and was an essential source for Tolstoy's War and Peace. It is also a reminder of the risks of imperial hubris. Price: $11.96 (25% off)

My Fantoms By Théophile Gautier Translated and with an introduction by Richard Holmes The famed biographer of Shelley and Coleridge, Richard Holmes, compiles fantastical stories of love and death and from France's leading Romantic, friend of Hugo, and dedicatee of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal. "It is in Gautier that we first seem to find an authentic French sense of the the unreal world...[it] is recognizable at once as something alike genuine and profound."—H.P. Lovecraft Price: $10.50 (25% off)

Afloat By Guy de Maupassant Translated and with an introduction by Douglas Parmée Maupassant merges fact and fiction, dream and documentation in this seemingly simple logbook of a sailing cruise along the French Mediterranean coast. "[Afloat] has spontaneity, gaiety and freshness."—Daily Telegraph (UK) Price: $10.50 (25% off)

The Widow By Georges Simenon Translated from the French by John Petrie Introduction by Paul Theroux Two outcasts, a widow and a recently released murderer, become involved in a love triangle with the girl next door. Published in the same year and often compared to The Stranger, The Widow is one of Simenon's most powerful and disturbing romans durs. Price: $9.71 (25% off)

Unforgiving Years By Victor Serge Translated from the French and with an introduction by Richard Greeman An unforgettable depiction of worlds in collapse, this first English translation of Victor Serge's last novel is a monumental mural of World War II, taking readers from a paranoid pre-war Paris, to Leningrad under German siege, to a Berlin that is collapsing, and finally, with the war over, to the mountains of Mexico. Price: $11.96 (25% off)

Novels in Three Lines By Félix Fénéon Translated and with an introduction by Luc Sante Luc Sante has selected the best of anarchist and art critic Fénéon's vignettes of the darker side of life—adultery, murder, revenge, labor unrest, and suicide—in early-20th-century France. —Illustrated Price: $10.50 (25% off)

The Engagement By Georges Simenon Afterword by John Gray New translation by Anna Moschovakis One of the most chilling and compassionate of Simenon's extraordinary psychological novels, The Engagement explores the mystery of a blameless heart in a compromised soul. Price: $9.71 (25% off)

The Strangers in the House By Georges Simenon Translated by Geoffrey Sainsbury Introduction by P.D. James In The Strangers in the House, Georges Simenon, master chronicler of the dark side of the human heart, gives us a detective story that is also a tale of an improbable redemption. Price: $10.50 (25% off)

Pages from the Goncourt Journals By Edmond and Jules de Goncourt Foreword by Geoff Dyer Edited and Translated by Robert Baldick No evocation of Parisian life in the second half of the nineteenth century can match that found in the journals of the brothers Goncourt. Price: $12.71 (25% off)

Red Lights By Georges Simenon Translated by Norman Denny Introduction by Anita Brookner Red Lights, one of Simenon's romans durs, is a dark and brilliant gaze at marriage, and is Simenon writing the American psyche at his best. Price: $10.50 (25% off)

Mouchette By Georges Bernanos Translated from the French by J.C. Whitehouse Introduction by Fanny Howe First published as Nouvelle Histoire de Mouchette in 1937, this French classic is the basis for Robert Bresson's cult film. Price: $10.50 (25% off)

The Man Who Watched Trains Go By By Georges Simenon Translated from the French by Marc Romano Introduction by Luc Sante How different are the cautious routines of ordinary life from the compulsions of a killer? How reliable is even the most reliable man's identity? What finally is the truth about a person? Price: $9.71 (25% off)

Tropic Moon By Georges Simenon Translated from the French by Marc Romano Introduction by Norman Rush In Tropic Moon, Simenon, the master of the psychological novel, offers an incomparable picture of degeneracy and corruption in a colonial outpost. Price: $9.71 (25% off)

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert By Joseph Joubert Translated and with an introduction by Paul Auster The writings of a secretive eighteenth-century French thinker who left an unpublished masterpiece behind. Price: $11.21 (25% off)

Count d'Orgel's Ball By Raymond Radiguet Translated from the French by Annapaola Cancogni Preface by Jean Cocteau A playful, Wildean meringue of missed meaning and romantic tangles. Price: $9.71 (25% off)

War and the Iliad By Rachel Bespaloff Simone Weil Translated from the French by Mary McCarthy Introduction by Christopher Benfey Afterword by Hermann Broch These essays do more than prove the permanent relevance of Homer's great poem. They analyze the logic of war itself, and explore how intoxicating violence defines the human condition. Price: $11.21 (25% off)

The Child By Jules Vallès Edited and with an introduction by Douglas Parmée Vallès's book is one of the funniest books in French literature, a triumph of insubordinate comedy over the forces of order and the self-appointed defenders of decency. Price: $11.96 (25% off)

Moravagine By Blaise Cendrars Translated from the French by Alan Brown Introduction by Paul La Farge At once truly appalling and appallingly funny, Moravagine bears comparison with Naked Lunch—except that it is a lot more entertaining to read. Price: $11.96 (25% off)

Monsieur Monde Vanishes By Georges Simenon Translated from the French by Jean Stewart Introduction by Larry McMurtry Unsurpassed as an evocation of milieu, whether of staid bourgeois propriety or waterfront seediness, Monsieur Monde Vanishes is another triumph by the twentieth century's greatest popular novelist. Price: $9.71 (25% off)

The Case of Comrade Tulayev By Victor Serge Translated from the French by Willard R. Trask Introduction by Susan Sontag The best novel ever written about the Stalinist purges is also a classic tale of risk and adventure that stands beside Malraux's Man's Fate and Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Price: $11.96 (25% off)

Dirty Snow By Georges Simenon Translated from the French by Marc Romano and Louise Varese Afterword by William T. Vollmann Dirty Snow, widely acknowledged as one of Simenon's finest books, is a study of the criminal mind comparable to Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. Price: $10.50 (25% off)

Three Bedrooms in Manhattan By Georges Simenon Translated from the French by Marc Romano and Lawrence G. Blochman Introduction by Joyce Carol Oates An actor and a divorcée meet in a deserted New York City bar. With little in common save loneliness, middle age, and a presentiment of escape, they improvise a love story. Price: $9.71 (25% off)

Monsieur Proust By Céleste Albaret Translated from the French by Barbara Bray Foreword by André Aciman This lovely book is as close as we can come to meeting Proust in person. Price: $14.21 (25% off)

René Leys By Victor Segalen Translated from the French by J.A. Underwood Preface by Ian Buruma This quirky tale of spiritual adventure tells of a Westerner in Peking seeking the mystery at the heart of the Forbidden City. Price: $10.50 (25% off)

Prisoner of Love By Jean Genet Translated from the French by Barbara Bray Introduction by Ahdaf Soueif Genet's final masterpiece, written and rewritten on his deathbed, is a lyrical and philosophical voyage to the bloody intersection of oppression, terror, and desire at the heart of the contemporary world. Price: $14.96 (25% off)

We Always Treat Women Too Well By Raymond Queneau Translated from the French by Barbara Wright Introduction by John Updike We Always Treat Women Too Well, a hilarious send-up of pulp fiction, tells how a lascivious young lady overcomes rebellion in Ireland. Price: $10.50 (25% off)

Witch Grass By Raymond Queneau Translated and with an introduction by Barbara Wright A wild philosophical farce that slips and slides from the bland routine of daily life through a series of comic run-ins before ending with an apocalyptic surprise. Price: $11.21 (25% off)

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