Parallel Text: French Short Stories: Nouvelles Francaises

French Short Stories #2

by Various

These eight stories by leading 20th century French writers offer fascinating insights into French life and literature and are accompanied by a parallel English text, making them valuable for both French and English language students.

Among the diverse and entertaining stories in the collection are the wistful masterpiece 'Green Tobacco' by Clair Sainte-Soline; the exuberant tale of 'The Ants' by the post-war king of caf� society, Boris Vian, and a suspense in the nineteenth-century erotic tradition from Andre de Mandiargues.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, France

216 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 30, 1992

About the author

Various is the correct author for any book with multiple unknown authors, and is acceptable for books with multiple known authors, especially if not all are known or the list is very long (over 50).

If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.

Note: WorldCat is an excellent resource for finding author information and contents of anthologies.

Reviews

[Lea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Literary merit aside (I did quite enjoy some of the stories, or better said, I would enjoy them had the reading not been an intellectual torture), I feel like I learned absolutely nothing from this. Having already read a couple novels in French, I thought this would be an easy ride. Nope. Had to read three times some sentences between verifying the English translation (which did not always seem that specific or strictly faithful to the original, at least according to my intuition). Obscure, barely used words abundant, terminology specific to for example, tobacco cultivation, warfare, or naval adventures in some cases left me clueless as to both French and the English term. Oh, the misery!
Why on earth were these stories chosen for people motivated to learn this language?!

[Emily D]

Decided to level-up my French texts. Out with the simple "101 French Proverbs" / "101 French Idioms" and moving on to real literary pieces. Figured short stories would be a nice place to start. The introduction promises a good collection of famous French and Francophone authors. Excited to go through this book :)

[Rodrigo d'Orey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not so impressed with the stories themselves but vocabulary wise it was pretty good. A very clear progression in increasing language difficulty from the first story to the last. The last story was just a barrage of tough vocabulary and writing style (a writing style that perhaps went a bit over the top). Perhaps will need to read it again in a few months to enjoy the stories better.

[Jillian]

Translating these stories represents the bulk of my preparation for the French proficiency exam. Let's hope it goes well...