13 Books That Will Transport You to France
It's a truth universally acknowledged: Books can do wonders to frame and shape your adventures abroad. Delicious food writing might inspire a culinary course through Mexico City, or an exciting detective-noir might let you look at New York in a new light. But what about France, about whom so many songs have been sung, and plenty of poems penned? Bien sûr, beaucoup de littérature signifie beaucoup de possibilités. With that in mind, here are 12 France-related books that might inspire your next trip to the country, or simply shed light on its culture and people—a neat little reading list for someone who’s always dreaming about France (or that annoying friend who slips French into casual conversation).
While this reading list does skew so decadently French—butter and wine and oui oui baguettes ahead, naturally—that they’ll move you to book an Air France ticket as soon as possible, a fair chunk of these are also just fabulous translations of French literary tradition more broadly, and illuminate how (a few, not all) French writers understand themselves and their country. And for the American francophile, there are books by expats and others who have immigrated to France—a field so wide and storied that it may as well be a genre in and of itself: Literary minds like Baldwin and Hemingway, food queens Julia Child and M.F.K. Fisher, and brilliant folks of today like Lauren Collins and Sutanya Dacres. Allons-y, and happy reading.
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All products featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
The Perfect Nanny by Leïla Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor
What it’s about: This gripping novel opens with a double murder of two children (not a spoiler, it’s literally on the first page) before going into the backstory of their bourgeois Parisian family as well as their nanny, who is under financial and mental duress. The book is less of a whodunit (the source material and the marketing copy give obvious clues) than a whydunit, and author Leïla Slimani’s slick storytelling turns this bread-and-butter thriller premise into a deeply intelligent excavation of fraught themes like class, sexism, motherhood, and moral goodness. It was the most read book in France in 2016—that year, it sold 600,000 copies and won the prestigious Prix Goncourt—so, honestly, to read it is to participate in French culture. The text is efficient and propulsive (in both Sam Taylor’s English translation and Slimani’s original French), featuring sentences that will hold you in suspense until the very last page.
You should read this when: You’re already strapped into your seat on the plane because if you read this before boarding, you may become so enthralled that you miss your flight to Paris.
The book’s opening lines: “The baby is dead. It took only a few seconds. The doctor said he didn’t suffer. The broken body, surrounded by toys, was put inside a gray bag, which they zipped shut.”
Lie With Me by Philippe Besson, translated by Molly Ringwald
What it’s about: This short novel first published in 2017 as Arrête avec tes mensonges (literally, “stop with your lies”) was published as Lie With Me in the United States in 2017, where it was called “this year’s Call Me By Your Name.” The comparison is to be expected: Both books feature a romance between two young men in rural Western European settings in a bygone pre-AIDS era, narrated by a cerebral adult narrator trafficking in deep nostalgia and contemplating the impact of first love. Though the premise is familiar, Philippe Besson’s language is graceful (made a joy to read in English by the talented Molly Ringwald—yes, that Molly Ringwald) and his narration is inventive. In the text, his metafictional moves involve and implicate the reader, while challenging the ways storytellers remember past events and past lives. As a reading experience, it all feels unique and—I’m not sure how else to say it—supremely French.
You should read this when: You’re on a TGV, as the French countryside speeds past outside your window, contemplating if you want to let your life similarly pass you by.
The book’s opening lines: “One day—I can say precisely when, I know the date—I find myself in the bar of a hotel lobby in a provincial city, sitting in an armchair across from a journalist, a low round table between us, being interviewed for my latest novel, which recently came out.”
The Garden of Eden by Ernest Hemingway
What it’s about: Think of Americans writing in France, and you’re likely to come up with a handful of names, one of which would surely be Ernest Hemingway. His memoir A Moveable Feast, about his time as a struggling American journalist living in Paris in the 1920s, is perhaps the most often-cited text from the expats-in-France genre, but that was not his only book set in the country. The Garden of Eden takes place primarily along the Côte d’Azur and follows a couple who fall in love with the same woman and experiment with gender roles, presentation, and identities. This novel is an uncompleted work of Hemingway’s, published in 1986 by his literary executors, 25 years after his death. Though it’s hard to say what he ultimately intended for the story, chopped and screwed as it is, the book offers an unexpected side of the author’s oeuvre, in addition to place-writing that’s somehow both lush and sparse, making it an all the more thrilling read.
You should read this when: You’re in between research sprints on where to eat, stay, and play in the French Riviera (though we’ve done part of that for you, at least).
The book’s opening lines: “They were living at Grau du Roi then and the hotel was on a canal that ran from the walled city of Aigues Mortes straight down to the sea.”
Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin
What it’s about: Jump ahead a few decades to the 1950s, after Hemingway’s and Gertrude Stein’s Lost Generation of artists hit Paris, and you’ll run into James Baldwin on the streets of Saint-Germain-Des-Prés (for a while, he lived at the Hôtel Verneuil, among other auberges in the city). While in France, Baldwin wrote his memoir Notes of a Native Son, part of which examines American culture and identity from an expatriate perspective. However, the influence of his life in France is most keenly evident in his novel Giovanni’s Room, which tells the story of David, an American man in Paris grappling with his intense romantic and sexual feelings for Giovanni, an Italian bartender. It’s an ultimately, tragic story, and an early exploration of queerness, social alienation, and masculinity—groundbreaking when it was published in 1956, and a classic masterpiece of English literature today.
You should read this when: You’re craving a moody escape to Paris that leaves you heartbroken and questioning your personal morals (you know, for a bit of light reading).
The book’s opening lines: “I stand at the window of this great house in the south of France as night falls, the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life. I have a drink in my hand, there is a bottle at my elbow. … I may be drunk by morning but that will not do any good. I shall take the train to Paris anyway.”
My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
What it’s about: For those just starting to learn more about Julia Child (or if you’ve already devoured the HBO Max series Julia like everyone else), it’s a good idea to start from the very end. Child and her grandnephew Alex Prud’homme collaborated on this autobiography before she died in 2004, and it was published posthumously in 2006. The book is a treat for any fan of Child’s: It’s a comprehensive and authoritative look at her life, featuring some very lovely archival photographs, an extensive chronology of her rise to icon status, and a supremely detailed index cataloging every person, place, ingredient, recipe, topic, and event discussed in the book.
You should read this when: You’re beginning your very first foray into the world of Julia Child and need a primer on the woman, the myth, the legend.
The book’s opening lines: “At five-forty-five in the morning, Paul and I rousted ourselves from our warm bunk and peered out of the small porthole in our cabin aboard the SS America. Neither of us had slept very well that night, partially due to the weather and partially due to our rising excitement.”
Long Ago In France: The Years In Dijon by M.F.K. Fisher
What it’s about: All that said, if you love everything Julia Child, you must also allow M.F.K. Fisher into your life. Mary Frances Kennedy was perhaps the best American food writer—and one of the best American writers, full stop—working in the 20th century (our “poet of the appetites,” according to John Updike), having written 27 books in her long career, including the definitive English translation of Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste. In this memoir of her three years in Dijon, Fisher recounts arriving in the capital of Burgundy in 1929 with her new husband Al and her early lessons in French culture, food, and wine, flexing her sharp and evocative prose across 176 tight pages. You’ll breeze through her writing so quickly that you’ll be glad you have over 20 more books of hers to add to your list: For more French flavors, follow up with Map of Another Town, Fisher’s memoir of her time in Provence after World War II; for a more food-forward account of the Dijon years, try The Gastronomical Me.
You should read this when: You’ve already cooked your way through Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and need a new reading or food-related project to satiate your appetites.
The book’s opening lines: “Someone shrieked harshly to come in. Madame Ollangnier darted from the kitchen, which lay just beyond the dining room, under the first rise of the staircase. She had on a filthy apron, and I could hear someone rattling pans and chopping and beating.”
Dinner for One: How Cooking in Paris Saved Me by Sutanya Dacres
What it’s about: For a more contemporary American-moves-to-Paris story pick up Dinner for One, the debut memoir of Sutanya Dacres, the host of the eponymous podcast. Reeling from the sudden expiration of her marriage to The Frenchman (“let’s call him TFM for short,” she says) for whom she moved to France, she cooks her way through healing and back to joy while rebuilding her life in her Montmartre apartment. These pages are filled with equal parts optimism and realism, hope and loss, American glee and Parisian bite. It’s an absolute must-read.
You should read this when: You’re one slightly-mean email away from snapping and absconding to France in a last-ditch effort to fall back in love with your life (and it just might work).
The book’s opening lines: “The day I reached my breaking point started out like so many others since my husband had left four months earlier—wake up, get ready, and leave my apartment as quickly as possible. Decently sized by Paris standards, the 463-square-foot apartment faced south, overlooking a shared courtyard, with double-door windows that spilled sunlight into the bedroom and living room.”
Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking by Bill Buford
What it’s about: Did you ever read that story in The New Yorker from a few years ago, about a writer who moved to Lyon with his family and apprenticed with a baker named Bob (real name “Yves,” mais tout le monde l’appelait Bob), when it truth it was about diligence, humility, and the beauty of community-making? Did you know it was an adapted excerpt from Bill Buford’s latest memoir, published in 2020? This book chronicles his five years in the French heartland in pursuit of why we hold the culinary traditions of France in such high regard—both in our minds and our palates. Buford’s writing is passionate, endlessly curious, and meticulous (a scene of a pig’s butchering is intense, an explanation of the French visa process is illuminating), and this tome—clocking in at over 400 pages—will keep you satiated over multiple trips to Lyon, Bordeaux, Marseille, and elsewhere.
You should read this when: You’re looking to read an adventurous story, like an epic saga, but you’re also in the mood for a glimpse into the culinary world—something like “Odysseus, but in France.”
The book’s opening lines: “On a bright, chilly, autumnal afternoon in 2007, I met Michel Richard, a chef and the man who would radially change my life—and the lives of my wife, Jessica Green, and our two-year-old twins—without my quite knowing who he was, and in the confidence that, whoever he might be, he was someone I would never see again.”
When in French by Lauren Collins
What it’s about: Language is about connection. So what happens when, metaphorically, that gap feels too large to cross, or when there is an invisible wall between you and someone else? The delights, challenges, and intricacies of communicating with another person—these are the major themes of this memoir about learning the infamously finicky French language after moving to Europe (to Geneva, Switzerland, though the author ends up in Paris by the end of it). As evidenced by this fantastic book, Lauren Collins is a supremely intelligent and warm writer, as well as the master of kickers, those snappy and incisive sentences that close out a paragraph, or page, or chapter, whether it be about the monolingualism of American culture, why some cuts of meat in the US are unavailable at francophone butcher shops, or what it’s like to fall in love and build a family. If you’re someone committed to maintaining that year-long streak on Duolingo, consider this the book for you.
You should read this when: You’re dating/married to a French-speaker and you need the motivation to learn a new-to-you language—and the hard-to-find words to describe your love
The book’s opening lines: “I hadn’t wanted to live in Geneva. In fact, I had decisively wished not to, but there I was. … The bell rang. Newlywed and nearly speechless, I cracked open the door, a slab of oak with a beveled brass knob. Next to it, the landlord had installed a nameplate, giving the place the look less of a home than of a bilingual tax firm.”
The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
What it’s about: This epic novel consists of 576 pages dripping with pure drama, opulence, and artifice—a true opera of a story, as the protagonist and narrator known as Lilliet Berne would have it. Set in 19th-century Paris, Berne is a celebrated soprano who needs an opera written just for her, which would immortalize her in the canon. But when one is finally presented to her, she discovers she has been betrayed: It is clearly based on the true story of her life that she has kept secret. From there, Alexander Chee’s magnificent tour de force wheels between the past and present, recounting the truth of Lilliet’s origins and following her pursuit of the confidante who threatens to expose her.
You should read this when: You’re longing to be dressed in a voluminous gown of silk and taffeta, running through a Baroque palace like you’re in a glittering French perfume ad
The book’s opening lines: “When it began, it began as an opera would begin, in a palace, at a ball, in an encounter with a stranger who, you discover, has your fate in his hands. He is perhaps a demon or a god in disguise, offering you a chance at either the fulfillment of a dream or a trap for the soul. A comic element—the soprano arrives in the wrong dress—and it decides her fate.”
The Mad Women’s Ball by Victoria Mas, translated by Frank Wynne
What it’s about: Sticking to Paris in the 19th century and all its gloriously bizarre truths, this historical novel offers a fictional story based on a very real event: “le bal des folles” (literally, the ball of the mad women), an annual gathering at the Salpêtrière Asylum, when the upper classes of the city would gawk at Salpêtrière’s wards: women cast out from society—many were sex workers, unwanted by their families, or mentally ill. In Victoria Mas’s captivating telling (rendered in crystalline English by Frank Wynne), an intelligent woman named Eugenie is handed over to Salpêtrière by her bourgeois family and meets Geneviève, a nurse who has forsaken faith for science. Their entwined narratives illuminate the double-edged life that the asylum offered Frenchwomen of that time and place: freedom under constraints.
You should read this when: You’re still longing for the fantasy of gallivanting in a grand gown, but you want the vibe to be a bit dark and Gothic, something grotesquely captivating
The book’s opening lines: “3 March 1885 — ‘Louise. It is time.” With one hand, Geneviève pulls back the blanket that hides the sleeping figure of the girl. Curled up in a fetal position on the narrow mattress, her mass of thick, dark hair covers the pillow and part of her face. Lips parted, Louise is snoring softly.”
The Revolt by Clara Dupont-Monod, translated by Ruth Diver
What it’s about: Going a bit back further into history, this short but intense novel about the Great Revolt of 1173–1174 and its aftermath dives deep into the psyches of the historical figures at its center: Eleanor of Aquitaine and one of her sons, Richard the Lionheart, who also serves as the book’s primary narrator. True, the titular revolt concerns English monarchs, but to tell the story of 12th-century England is to also involve the territories of Normandy and Brittany, which today belong to modern France. That aside, Clara Dupont-Monod’s novel is a fascinating exploration of Eleanor’s motivations for conspiring with her sons and attempting to overthrow her husband, Henry II of England—and wonderfully translated from the original French by Ruth Diver, to boot.
You should read this when: You’re on holiday in France with your bickering family who can’t ever agree on the vacation’s itinerary—just to remind you that, hey, it could be a whole lot worse.
The book’s opening lines: “In my mother’s eyes, I see things that overwhelm me. I see vast conquests, deserted houses, and suits of armor. She carries a range within herself that condemns me, and forces me to be a better man. This evening, she comes to us. … It is with a soft voice, full of menace, that our mother commands us to overthrow our father.”
Matrix by Lauren Groff
What it’s about: For more novels based in this era of Anglo-Franco history, pick up a copy of Lauren Groff’s Matrix, in which Eleanor steals the spotlight by being extremely beautiful and deliciously frightening. That said, this story revolves instead around Marie de France, a 12th-century poet about whom extremely little is known—which gives Groff plenty of room for a radical reimagining of Marie's life as the prioress of a royal abbey who grows to lead and protect a community of women, awakening to the world and all its sensations. This is Groff's writing at its most electric and sensual, giving us a book for all seasons. I implore you: Read it now.
You should read this when: You’re itching to read one of the greatest American writers working today take on a historical figure and give her story a feminist and inventive spin
The book’s opening lines: “She rides out of the forest alone. Seventeen years old, in the cold March drizzle, Marie who comes from France. It is 1158 and the world bears the weariness of late Lent. Soon it will be Easter, which arrives early this year. In the fields, the seeds uncurl in the dark cold soil, ready to punch into the freer air.”
