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Summary
When a bumbling holy man mistakenly baptizes a colony of penguins, God endows the animals with souls and their formerly peaceful community declines into a maelstrom of violence and sin. This witty allegory lampoons French history from ancient to modern times, taking satirical swipes at socialists, royalists, industrialists, militarists, and even the Dreyfus affair, and concluding with a remarkably prescient view of the future. Indeed, more than a...
2) The years
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"Available in English for the first time, the latest astonishing, bestselling, and award-winning book by Annie Ernaux. The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present -- even projections into the future -- photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect,...
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Twayne's world authors volume TWAS 513 : France
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Provides in-depth analysis of the life, works, career, and critical importance of Jean Giraudoux.
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In Edmond Rostand's beloved 1897 stage play "Cyrano De Bergerac", the titular soldier-poet is hopelessly in love with Roxane, the most beautiful woman in all of Paris. Believing he has no chance with her because of his extremely large nose, he agrees to write love letters on behalf of the slow-witted Christian, who also pines for Roxane. Rostand's work is a fictionalization of the real life novelist Cyrano De Bergerac, who in addition to being a novelist...
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From the author of the beloved classic The Little Prince and a winner of the Grand Prix of the Académie Française, Wind, Sand and Stars captures the grandeur, danger, and isolation of flight. Its exciting account of air adventure, combined with lyrical prose and the spirit of a philosopher, makes it one of the most popular works ever written about flying. Translated by Lewis Galantière.
8) Colette
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After marrying 'Willy, ' a successful Parisian writer, Colette is transplanted to the intellectual and artistic splendor of Paris. Willy convinces Colette to ghostwrite a semi-autobiographical novel about a witty and brazen country girl named Claudine, sparking a bestseller and a cultural sensation, inspiring additional Claudine novels. Colette's fight over creative ownership and gender roles drives her to overcome societal constraints, revolutionizing...
10) Open heart
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In this unforgettable book, the award-winning writer, during his recovery after a life-threatening heart surgery, reflected on his many losses and accomplishments, and on all that remained to be done, sharing his aspirations for his writings and his hope that he made the world a better place.
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How to get along with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love--such questions arise in most people's lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honorable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy? This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Monatigne, perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower,...
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Oprah Winfrey interviews author and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Oswiecim, Poland. Wiesel talks of his personal experiences at Auschwitz and the meaning of the Holocaust which he detailed in his book, Night. Includes historical documentary footage of the concentration camp.
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When Albert Camus died in a car crash in January 1960 he was only 46 years old already a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and a world figure author of the enigmatic The Stranger, the fable called The Plague, but also of the combative The Rebel which attacked the 'politically correct' among his con-temporaries. Thanks to his early literary achievement, his work for the under-ground newspaper Combat and his editorship of that daily in its Post-Liberation...
16) Confessions
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In his Confessions, Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and alienated from the world of modern civilization. In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau analyzes with...
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"[Elie Wiesel] taught at Boston University for nearly four decades, and with this book, Ariel Burger--devoted protégé, apprentice, and friend--takes us into the sacred space of Wiesel's classroom. There, Wiesel challenged his students to explore moral complexity and to resist the dangerous lure of absolutes. In bringing together never-before-recounted moments between Wiesel and his students, Witness serves as a moral education in and of itself--a...
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The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard brought Anatole France immediate fame. The protagonist, a skeptical, elderly scholar, gets caught up in an adventure when he attempts to locate an ancient literary document. Faced with an impossible situation, he is forced to act outside of the law. This suspenseful tale was written with the grace and style for which France is well known.
