Books
Here are a list of the books that I used for research, while I was writing The Unexpected Tale of Bastien Bonlivre and its sequel, The Bad Brothers. I read everything I could get my hands on - from brilliant children’s stories set in Paris to in-depth works of non-fiction about the 1920s, the aftermath of the First World War in Europe, and much, much more.
Check out the books below!
Children’s books
THE INVENTION OF HUGO CABRET
Brian Selznick
Twelve-year-old Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity.
But when his world suddenly interlocks with an eccentric girl and her grandfather, Hugo's undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy.
a hundred million francs
Paul Berna
A bunch of scruffy urchin kids in the backstreets of Paris outwit thieves to uncover the whereabouts of millions of francs stolen from the Paris-Ventimiglia express.
rooftoppers
Katherine Rundell
Everyone tells Sophie that she was orphaned in a shipwreck - found floating in a cello case on the English Channel on her first birthday. But Sophie is convinced her mother also survived.
When the Welfare Agency threatens to separate her from her guardian and send her to an orphanage, Sophie takes matters into her own hands, starting with the only clue she has - the address of a cello-maker in Paris.
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas
When young D'Artagnan comes to Paris to seek his fortune, he is challenged to a duel with not one, but three of the king's Musketeers. But Athos, Porthos and Aramis become his trusted friends as he tries to prove himself worthy of becoming a fourth Musketeer.
Madeline
Ludwig Bemelmans
“In an old house in Paris
that was covered with vines
lived twelve little girls
in two straight lines
the smallest one was Madeline.”
BOOKS WRITTEN IN THE FRENCH LANGUAGE
LA CIVILISATION, MA MèRE!…
Driss Chraïbi
The story of a mother in 1930s Morocco who is trapped between two worlds: ancestral traditions and modernisation. With the help of her two loving sons - who narrate the story - she discovers more about herself and the world she lives in.
ZAZIE DANS LE MéTRO | Zazie on the méTRO
Raymond Queneau
Provincial pre-teenager Zazie stays in Paris with her Uncle Gabriel for two days. Zazie manages to evade her uncle's custody, and métro strike notwithstanding, sets out to explore the city on her own.
PRESQUE MINUIT
Anthony Combroxelle
In 1889 Paris, six orphans find themselves living on the street just as the Exposition Universelle arrives in town.
When the six children steal something from someone they shouldn’t have, they find themselves thrown into a magical Paris, where mechanical villains, mythological creatures and sorcerers rule the streets. Can they save themselves and the city they love before it’s too late?
OLDER FICTION
The Art of Losing
Alice Zeniter
Naïma has always known that her family came from Algeria – but up until now, that meant very little to her. Born and raised in France, her knowledge of that foreign country is limited to what she’s learned from her grandparents’ tiny flat in a crumbling French sink estate: the food cooked for her, the few precious things they brought with them when they fled.
On the past, her family is silent. Why was her grandfather Ali forced to leave? Was he a harki – an Algerian who worked for and supported the French during the Algerian War of Independence? Once a wealthy landowner, how did he become an immigrant scratching a living in France?
The Influence Peddlars
Hédi Kaddour
Gather together French colonialists, young nationalists eager for independence, and local Maghreb leaders in a small North African city of the 1920s. Bring a collection of brash American filmmakers and celebrities into the picture. Dangerous cultural collisions are the inevitable result in Hédi Kaddour’s best-selling novel of French colonial rule and its persisting legacy of human chaos and cultural tragedy.
NON-FICTION
GABRIELLE PETIT: THE DEATH & LIFE OF A FEMALE SPY IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR
Sophie De Schaepdrijver
In central Brussels stands a statue of a young woman. Built in 1923, it is the first monument to a working-class woman in European history. Her name was Gabrielle Petit. History has forgotten Petit, an ambitious and patriotic Belgian, executed by firing squad in 1916 for her role as an intelligence agent for the British Army. After the First World War she was celebrated as an example of stern endeavour, but a hundred years later her memory has faded.
France
Emile Chabal
France is the most-visited country in the world. It attracts millions of tourists, most of whom come in search of beautiful architecture, good food, and fine art. But appearances can be deceptive. France is not only a place of culture and glamour; it also carries the bitter memories of violence, division and broken promises.
Emile Chabal, a leading specialist of contemporary France, tells the story of a paradoxical country. From the calamitous defeat by Hitler's armies in 1940 to the spectacular gilets jaunes protests, he explores the contradictions that have shaped French history over the last eighty years.
Paris: The Secret History
Andrew Hussey
Paris: The Secret History ranges across centuries, movements, and cultural and political beliefs, from Napoleon's overcrowded cemeteries to Balzac's nocturnal flight from his debts.
Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in paris, new york, tokyo, venice and london
Lauren Elkin
'Flâneuse [flanne-euhze], noun, from the French. Feminine form of flâneur [flanne-euhr], an idler, a dawdling observer, usually found in cities.
Part cultural meander, part memoir, Flâneuse traces the relationship between the city and creativity through a journey that begins in New York and moves us to Paris, via Venice, Tokyo and London, exploring along the way the paths taken by the flâneuses who have lived and walked in those cities.
When Paris Sizzled
Mary McAuliffe
When Paris Sizzled vividly portrays the City of Light during the fabulous 1920s, les Années folles, when Parisians emerged from the horrors of war to find that a new world greeted them―one that reverberated with the hard metallic clang of the assembly line, the roar of automobiles, and the beat of jazz.
Yet rather than being a decade of unmitigated bliss, les Années folles also saw an undercurrent of despair as well as the rise of ruthless organizations of the extreme right, aimed at annihilating whatever threatened tradition and order―a struggle that would escalate in the years ahead.
African Europeans: An Untold History
Olivette Otele
Olivette Otele traces a long African European heritage through the lives of individuals both ordinary and extraordinary. She uncovers a forgotten past, from Emperor Septimius Severus, to enslaved Africans living in Europe during the Renaissance, and all the way to present-day migrants moving to Europe's cities.
Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature
Robert Darnton
In eighteenth-century France, censors, authors, and booksellers collaborated in making literature by navigating the intricate culture of royal privilege. Even as the king's censors outlawed works by Voltaire, Rousseau, and other celebrated Enlightenment writers, the head censor himself incubated Diderot's great Encyclopedie by hiding the banned project's papers in his Paris townhouse.
By rooting censorship in the particulars of history, Darnton's revealing study enables us to think more clearly about efforts to control expression past and present.