In this list, we have 15 Classic French Books You Should Read. These books will take you on a trip to the lanes of French culture and history.
The Second Sex is addressed as the Bible of Western feminism. This book travels from Ancient Greece to the twentieth century.
Dangerous Liaisons is all about depravity and decadence amongst the French aristocracy. The tale is set a few years before the French Revolution.
On the surface level, this picaresque novel is about adventure, discovery, and romance but profoundly, it deals with grave comments on French society during the eighteenth century.
This book weaves together three distinct tales. It includes Eugene de Rastignac, a young man who is beginning life and learning to make out an existence in Parisian society.
Madame Bovary is a woman who is always seeking more. She has read several French romance novels and created a vision of her supposed ideal marital life.
In Search of Lost Time is the story of the writer’s life as it prefaces with a narrator biting into a madeleine and being reminded of his blissful upbringing.
The Red and Back deals with the life of a young man named Julien Sorel. He wants to elevate above his upbringing.
This is a story of a man who has everything, a career, a wife, and a child. He is involved in a complex network of overlapping responsibilities and relations.
L’amant or The Lover is Marguerite Duras’ most popular work. The book is autobiographical and is set in French colonial Vietnam.
One cannot list French classics and go on without mentioning Victor Hugo. The main character of the book Jean Valjean is out from prison after nineteen years.
Indiana deals with several typical themes of nineteenth-century works: adultery, longing for romance, class, the French empire, critique of social norms, and more.
Camus is one of the most popular French writers and if we talk about philosophy and today’s world we can’t help but mention him.
The Beast Within is set during the nineteenth century alike several other novels. However, Zola’s style and approach made this psychological thriller an exception.
The Flower of Evil is a compilation of poems regarding he changes Paris underwent because of the industrialisation during the nineteenth century.
Molière is referred to as French Shakespeare. His satirical works are so astute that some of his works got banned. The Misanthrope makes fun of the flaws he humankind.