cover image Xcites: The Flamingo Book of New French Writing

Xcites: The Flamingo Book of New French Writing

. HarperCollins UK, $14.99 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-00-655191-1

The brief offerings in this collection of new French writing reveal some deep fissures in the ruling bourgeoisie: hostility toward immigrants, nihilistic youth enthralled by drugs and violence, and cultural insecurity over the country's exalted past. With excerpts from published works by energetic young writers who remain, for the most part, untranslated, de Chamberet, a literary agent who works both sides of the Channel, is determined to rescue French literature from ""cold cerebrality and self-indulgent navel-gazing."" Reactionary Michel Houellebecq, whose Elementary Particles has just exploded on American shores, will be recognized in the voice of his odious, cynical narrator, who attempts to incite a friend to murder a young woman he desires because love is ""no longer possible,"" in ""The Port of Call."" A more modestly subversive tale, Marie Desplechin's ""Haiku,"" explores racism among 20-something professionals at a dinner party. Ilan Duran Cohen, in ""Wonderland,"" one of the few emotionally resonant pieces, recounts a young Jewish man's New York-Paris conversations with his mother, who is obsessed with getting her nose fixed. North African-born writers Abdourahman Waberi and Mounsi offer thoughtful father-son stories. Aside from the 14 fiction pieces, there are jarring nonfiction accounts tacked on the end--apparently to ensure that the reader gleans the correct picture of the ""new"" France--including an excerpt from director Mathieu Kassovitz's screenplay of inner-city brutality, La haine. The translations are decidedly uneven despite the editor's hype. There are some scintillating moments here, although many of the stories are too self-consciously ""edgy"" to be engaging, but intrigued readers will be eager to read more work in translation by several of these promising upstarts. (Jan. 1)