The plot of Exercises in Style is simple: a man gets into an argument with another passenger on a bus. However, this anecdote is told 99 more times, each in a radically different style, as a sonnet, an opera, in slang, and with many more permutations. This virtuoso set of variations is a linguistic rust-remover, and a guide to literary forms.

Seated in a Paris cafe, a man glimpses another man, a shadowy figure hurrying to the train. Who is he? he wonders, and how does he live? Instantly the shadow comes to life, precipitating a series of hilarious encounters involving a range of disreputable and heartwarming characters that prove as incredible as real life. The Bark Tree is an enchantment itself. A supreme example of the novel poem. Claude Simonnet

The cult classic from one of France's most stylish writers'Don't give a damn,' says Zazie, 'what I wanted was to go in the metro'Impish, foul-mouthed Zazie arrives in Paris from the country to stay with her uncle Gabriel. All she really wants to do is ride the metro, but finding it shut because of a strike, Zazie looks for other means of amusement and is soon caught up in a comic adventure that becomes wilder and more manic by the minute. In 1960 Queneau's cult classic was made into a hugely successful film by Louis Malle. Packed full of word play and phonetic games, Zazie in the Metro remains as stylish and witty as ever.

In this delightful, cinema-inspired daydream of a novel, an identity-shifting protagonist uses the everyday inspirations of his life to catapult himself into the realm of imagination, blurring the boundaries between reality and fantasy.The Skin of Dreams is a novel of waking dreams. Even as he lives his life, Jacques L’Aumône, its hero, daydreams a hundred other possible lives. A few lines on a page, a chance encounter, a remark overheard in passing, any of these are enough to kick things into gear and send him off outside of himself to become a boxer, a general, a bishop, or a lord. He lives alongside his life with diligence and steadfastness; and the passage from real to dream is so natural for him that he no longer knows precisely which him he is. Eventually he becomes an actor in Hollywood, and the basis of countless dreams for others. This Jacques L’Aumône, like the characters who surround him, has the same sort of haunting and...

Le Chiendent 1933