The Michelin Red Guide to the Hotels & Restaurants of France was first published in 1900 and has since become one of the sacred texts of travel, the Abbeville to Zoufftgen of French hospitality. Don’t hope for descriptions of decor or a rundown on menus or service; the Michelin is above all that. Instead, icons grade hotels according to comfort (from luxury to simple) and setting (pleasant to interesting), and restaurants according to the food. If you prefer descriptions, turn to the company’s excellent range of regional Green Guides. The 2006 Red Guide is out on March 1, priced £15.99.
There are guides to every aspect of Paris, from museums and bars to sex and shopping — and then there is Thirza Vallois’ extraordinary Around and About Paris (Iliad Books, three volumes; £18.90 per volume, including p&p, or £47.95, including p&p, for all three, from www.thirzavallois.com). This three-volume walking guide by a long-time resident unveils Paris arrondissement by arrondissement, street by street. Packed with history, anecdote and curiosity, it brings the city alive.
NOVELS
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F Scott Fitzgerald was an unrivalled myth-maker, and in his 1934 novel Tender Is the Night (Penguin £7.99), he added glam to the Côte d’Azur. One of his most autobiographical works, it follows a gilded couple torn apart by wealth and mental instability.
It was also prophetic: within six years of publication, Fitzgerald was dead and his wife, Zelda, was in a mental institution — but the Riviera’s reputation was made.
L’Eau des Collines (The Water of the Hills) has proved to be the prolific French writer and film-maker Marcel Pagnol’s most enduring work, although perhaps you know it as Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. Published in 1962 as a two-part work — and made into two acclaimed films in the 1980s — they have now been reprinted in a single edition (Prion £9.99). A story of greed and revenge, as two families fight for control of a water source, it remains powerfully moving, but most impressive is Pagnol’s view of his beloved Provence. You can smell the wild herbs underfoot.
Julian Barnes’s reputation as one of our most reliably francophile novelists was sealed by the publication of Flaubert’s Parrot. In Cross Channel (Picador £7.99), he charts the ties that bind France and England in a series of exquisite short stories. Love and sex, food, past and present, art and literature are all among Barnes’s material in this sparkling collection.
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Kate Mosse’s first foray into historical fiction has produced Labyrinth (Orion £7.99), a gripping Holy Grail quest set in southern France in the 13th century, as the Catholic church comes into conflict with the Cathars. The story line runs on knowledge and fun — Carcassonne never looked so good.
Michel Houellebecq is the enfant terrible of the French literary scene, his mission to confront French taboos. In one of his most celebrated — and reviled — novels, Atomised (Vintage £6.99), he tells the story of half-brothers, one an intellectual, the other a libertine, but in the telling, Houellebecq attacks the political and intellectual core of European society.
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TRAVEL
Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes (Penguin £8.99) shows his brilliance in this genre. On the road with a broken heart and empty bank account, he traipses the beautiful Cévennes mountains with his donkey, Modestine, and a notebook. Few travel writers since have come close to touching the brilliance of this cult work.
Ever since Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence, France has been the subject of countless “living abroad” books. The best of the more recent releases is Rupert Wright’s Notes from the Languedoc (Ebury Press £7.99). Wright, an American journalist, does a good job of conjuring up the characters we expect from this sort of book, but he also folds in some of the region’s turbulent history and a dose of humour.
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