My 10 Favorite Books about France, Plus a Bonus for You

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A friend recently requested recommendations of books I’ve enjoyed reading about France.  Here are a few, some with comments:

1. The Journal of Helene Berr – the diary of a young Jewish Parisian during the Nazi occupation.
2. Suite Francaise – heartbreaking, as is Irene Nemirosky’s own story.
3. A Place of Greater Safety – Hillary Mantel’s historical novel of the French Revolution.
4. Dancing to the Precipice – reads like a novel but is based on the memoirs of an astonishing woman who grew up in Paris at the onset of the Revolution. Lucy Dillon lived on rue de Bac, close to the Hotel Lutetia. Dick and I have tried (unsuccessfully) to find her house. As Paris expanded, I believe, properties were demolished and/or reordered.
5. Two great bios on Maria Antoinette, one by Stefan Zweig and another by Antonia Fraser.
6. My Life in France – Julia Child’s time in Paris.
7. Just started Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child.
8. A Paris Wife: –Hadley Richardson’s and Earnest Hemmingway’s time together in Paris.
9. Code Name Verity – a clever, somewhat brutal, well-researched WWII semi-mystery.
10. Pure – an ambitious young man arrives in Paris in the late 18^th century to clean an overflowing cemetery of its noxious odeurs. Elegant writing, Pure overflows with vitality and color.

Alan Furst’s well-researched books are always entertaining.

An incomplete reading list – some fiction, some non – of books, mostly set in France (in no particular order):

• The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris
• Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light
• Americans in Paris: Life and Death Under Nazi Occupation
• And the Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris
• Au Revoir to All That
• The Road from the Past: Traveling through History in France
• Hungry for Paris
• Diner in French (M. Clark)
• The French Kitchen (Wells)
• Paris: The Food Lovers Guide* (book/app)
• A Kitchen in France
• Around My French Table
• The Sweet Life Paris
• My Paris Kitchen (Lebovitz)
• The Journal of Helene Berr
• Paris: The Novel
• A Train in Winter
• Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure
• Suite Francaise
• Five Quarters of the Orange
• A Place of Greater Safety
• Dancing to the Precipice
• Code Name Verity
• Marie Antoinette: The Journey (Antonia Fraser)
• Marie Antoinette (Stefan Zweig)
• A Tale of Two Cities
• Les Miserables
• The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of WWII
• Code Name Madeline: A Sufi Spy in Nazi Occupied Paris
• Pure
• Pont Neuf (Byrd)
• The Elegance of the Hedgehog
• All the Light We Cannot See
• French Country Cooking (Mimi Thorisson)
• L’Historie Vrai de Zarafa
• The Conspirator: a Novel
• The Paris Deadline
• The Silence of the Sea
• Madam Foucade’s Secret War
• Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France
• Pure (Miller) – a late-18th-century tale of a fetid but intoxicating city on the brink of a revolution.
• Alan Furst WWII spy novels (many of which are set in Paris)