Issues
← Back to all issuesGranta 59: France: The Outsider
Autumn 1997
What has happened to France – the universal nation, the tutor of the good life, the place we visited to feel the kiss of a superior civilization? This issue presents fresh new voices from a country searching for a new idea of itself.
From this Issue
|Granta 59
We Are the Kings
Michel Houellebecq
‘Smoking cigarettes has become the only element of real freedom in my day-to-day existence.’
|Granta 59
A Sentence of Love
Assia Djebar
‘I met Annie for the first time in 1995, in Algiers. A friend of my sister's, she came from Paris and stayed with me for one night.’
|Granta 59
Fort-de-France
David Macey
‘In an hour or so, the bats will fly during a brief twilight. And then the tree frogs will begin to chirp in the dark ’
|Granta 59
The Rat
Patrick Chamoiseau
‘Fort-de-France, at that time, had not yet declared war on rats. Along with the crabs, they inhabited the crumbled sidewalks and canals of the city. ’
|Granta 59
Night in the Afternoon
Caroline Lamarche
‘A little entrance hall. A staircase. To the left of the staircase, a door with a window leading into the concierge's room.’
|Granta 59
Lingua Franca
Luc Sante
‘In order to write of my childhood I have to translate. It is as if I were writing about someone else. As a boy, I lived in French; now, I live in English.’
|Granta 59
Whooah . . . Pizza!
Pierre Merle
The following examples of contemporary French slang come from Le Dico de l'Argot fin-de-siècle compiled by a Parisian journalist, Pierre Merle.
|Granta 59
Agnès
René Belletto
‘Having told his story, the thief had said goodbye to Agnès, regretfully, she thought’.
|Granta 59
The Farm at Le Garet
Raymond Depardon
‘On days when the light is beautiful, when the sun is red above the Saône, I find myself regretting not having come more often when my parents were working the farm.’
|Granta 59
The Case of Stephen Lawrence
Brian Cathcart
‘Stephen Lawrence was murdered on the night of 22 April 1993, in Eltham, a south-eastern suburb of London.‘
|Granta 59
Don’t Forsake Me
Ivan Klíma
'Bára went to the church on the advice of her friend Ivana. She had been suffering from occasional bouts of depression', Ivan Klíma in 'Don't Forsake Me' in Granta 59: France: The Outsider.
|Granta 59
Love of the World
John McGahern
It is very quiet here. Nothing much ever happens. We have learned to tell the...
