The
Little Book of Atheist Spirituality
by André Comte-Sponville
Publisher: Viking, 2007
Translated by Nancy Huston from L’esprit de l’athéisme,
Albin Michel, 2006
Can we do without religion? Can we have ethics without God?
Is there such thing as “atheist spirituality”?
In this powerful book, the internationally bestselling author
André Comte-Sponville presents a philosophical exploration
of atheism. Comte-Sponville offers rigorous, reasoned arguments
that take both Eastern and Western philosophical traditions
into account, and through his clear, concise, and often humorous
prose, he offers a convincing treatise on a new form of spiritual
life.
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Ravel
by Jean Echenoz
Publisher: The New Press, 2007, with a preface by Adam Gopnick
Translated by Linda Coverdale from Ravel, Editions
de Minuit, 2006
A bestseller in France, Ravel is a beguiling and original
evocation of the last ten years in the life of a musical genius,
written by the acclaimed novelist Jean Echenoz, winner of
the Prix Goncourt. The book opens in 1927 as Maurice Ravel—dandy,
eccentric, and curmudgeon—voyages across the Atlantic
aboard the luxurious ocean liner the France to begin his triumphant
grand tour across the United States, where he will travel
aboard such fabled trains as the Zephyr, the Hiawatha, and
the Sunset Limited, smoking his precious stash of Gauloises
along the way.
Rarely has the difficult craft of storytelling been as well
mastered.
— The Times Literary Supplement
The most distinctive voice of his generation and the master
magician of the contemporary French novel.
— The Washington Post
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Origins
by Amin Maalouf
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2008
Translated by Catherine Temerson from Origines, Grasset,
2004
Origins recounts the family history of the generation of
Maalouf’s paternal grandfather, Boutros Maalouf. Maalouf
sets out to discover the truth about why Boutros, a poet and
educator in Lebanon, traveled across the globe to rescue his
younger brother, Gabrayel, who had settled in Havana. What
follows is the gripping excavation of a family’s hidden
past. Origins is at once a gripping family chronicle and a
timely consideration of Lebanese culture and politics.
"Maalouf's novels re-create the thrill of childhood
reading, that primitive mixture of learning about something
unknown or unimagined."
— Claire Messud, The Guardian
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[L’intérieur
de la nuit]
by Leonora Miano
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, spring 2010
Translated by Tamsin Black from L’intérieur
de la nuit, Plon, 2005
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Kick
the Animal Out
by Véronique Ovaldé
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage Publishing, 2007, with a preface
by Siri Hustvedt
Translated by Adriana Hunter from Déloger l’animal,
Actes Sud, 2005
Fifteen-year-old Rose is trying to make sense of her world.
Her mother a beautiful woman with signature stiletto heels,
bright clothes, and the synthetic gleam of a blond wig has
vanished, and Rose is convinced that she must be in danger.
Unable to cope with the possibility of having been abandoned,
Rose uses her vivid imagination to construct her own explanation
for her mother s sudden disappearance.
“I wanted to tell stories but I was after a style,
after boldness, spirit, enhancement, and embroidering...I
wanted things to have neither substance nor form but rather
the two linked together and inseparable. I wanted malleable
sentences and movement. I didn’t want to let go of form
and at the same time I wanted to construct a powerful plot,
give each of the characters depth, breathing mysterious and
unshakable life into them.”
— Véronique Ovaldé in To My American Readers
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[Aux
Etats-Unis d’Afrique]
by Abdourahman A. Waberi
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, spring 2009
Translated by David and Nicole Ball from Aux Etats-Unis
d’Afrique, J-C Lattès, 2005
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[Les
islamistes marocains]
by Malika Zeghal
Publisher: Markus Wiener, May 2008
Translated by George A. Holoch Jr from Les islamistes
marocains, Editions La Découverte, 2005
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