A French Novel

6 hrs. 16 min.

Romance & Prose

Language Russian

Author Frédéric Beigbeder

Narrator Nadezhda Vinokurova

Description

When this book was released, critics unanimously noted that it displayed classic traditions of 20th-century French literature and compared it to novels by Roger Nimier and François Nourissier.
Bégbede’s protagonist has changed radically: before the reader is no longer a character from the media world, but an ordinary person with his own life story. The novel’s main character, a regular at nightclubs living in a world far removed from reality, suddenly faces it head-on. The book is based on a real story from the author’s life: for using cocaine in a public place, Frederic Beigbeder—by then already a famous writer—was detained by the police and sent to prison. In a dirty, cramped cell, he falls into despair. And suddenly, surfacing from the depths of memory, childhood and youth come back to him; the dark walls seem to shift apart and, for a time, disappear, replaced one by another by scenes from the past—episodes from the history of his family.
The novel “French Novel” sparked a heated discussion in the French press. The work’s undeniable literary merits were recognized with the prestigious Prix Renaudot for 2009.