Traveling to France? Read these books to get you in the sprit!
A year after we first met Hudson, the lovable mutt who moved to
Paris, he’s back and thirsting for adventure—this time in the glorious south of
France. When his owner decides it’s time to get away from the sweltering August
heat of the big city, Hudson is eager to follow. But of course what is a dream
vacation for his mistress proves anything but that for him. This city dog
discovers he's flat-footed when it comes to herding sheep, has no snout for
sniffing out truffles, and can barely pedal his bike when he gets into the Tour
de France. It’s only when he stops imitating the other dogs and follows his
heart that he discovers his own unique talent. Children, Francophiles, and
dog-lovers alike will fall in love all over again with the four-legged American
ex-pat as he sniffs, barks, and digs his way through Provence. Along the way,
they’ll bask in exquisite artwork that depicts Hudson and Provence in gorgeous
hues with a painterly touch that perfectly complements the narrative. Gouache
paintings of mountains and beaches, town squares and lavender fields, and
dogs—beagles, boxers and border collies—lots of them!—evoke all the scents and
scenery of Provence. A petit dictionnaire serves as an introduction
to French for young and old alike.
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame
This extraordinary historical French gothic novel, set in Medieval
Paris under the twin towers of its greatest structure and supreme symbol, the
cathedral of Notre-Dame, is the haunting drama of Quasimodo, the disabled
bell-ringer of Notre-Dame, as he struggles to stand up to his ableist guardian
Claude Frollo, who also wants to commit genocide against Paris' Romani
population.
The novel has been described as a key text in French literature[1] and has been
adapted for film over a dozen times, in addition to numerous television and
stage adaptations, such as a 1923 silent film with Lon Chaney, a 1939 sound
film with Charles Laughton, and a 1996 Disney animated film with Tom Hulce
(both as Quasimodo).
The novel sought to preserve values of French culture in a time period of great
change, which resulted in the destruction of many French Gothic structures. The
novel made Notre-Dame de Paris a national icon and served as a catalyst for
renewed interest in the restoration of Gothic form.
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It has been said that Victor Hugo has a street named after him in
virtually every town in France. A major reason for the singular celebrity of
this most popular and versatile of the great French writers is Les Misérables
(1862). In this story of the trials of the peasant Jean Valjean—a man unjustly
imprisoned, baffled by destiny, and hounded by his nemesis, the magnificently
realized, ambiguously malevolent police detective Javert—Hugo achieves the sort
of rare imaginative resonance that allows a work of art to transcend its genre.
Les Misérables is at once a tense thriller that contains one of the most
compelling chase scenes in all literature, an epic portrayal of the
nineteenth-century French citizenry, and a vital drama—highly particularized
and poetic in its rendition but universal in its implications—of the redemption
of one human being.
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