Theatre of war
There was a time when you read French literary novels in order to cultivate a certain kind of sophisticated suspicion. Post-modern writers like Robbe-Grillet, Ricardou and Perec were hyper-aware of the political and philosophical problems underlying traditional realist narratives. They produced novels that were as much critiques of novel writing as they were actual stories with actual characters. Nowadays, however, one might go to the French section of a bookshop looking for something more Balzacian. One might read Houellebecq for his excoriating critiques of our political culture, or Édouard Louis for an exposé of the prejudices fostered by French working-class life. These are very different writers, but they have in