Warum die Franzosen so gute Bücher schreiben

Jean-Paul Sartre once left his political mark on an entire generation in Europe. Michel Houellebecq now describes France as a country in crisis. French literature of the post-war period has always been programmatic, sometimes existentialist, sometimes political, always seductive. Iris Radisch embarks on a foray through recent French literature and introduces the most important authors. The "Zeit" journalist and author of a bestseller on Camus is guided by her own meetings with the authors and provides an insightful overview of the world from Sartre and Duras to Patrick Modiano, Yasmina Reza and Houellebecq. The book is a personal canon of France's most important writers - and is aimed at all those for whom the country has always been the place of cultural and literary longing. In a year in which elections were held in France and the country faces an uncertain future, the book is at the same time an important contribution to the debate on the intellectual state of our neighbouring country.