French Fiction in the Mitterrand Years: Memory, Narrative, Desire

In the 1980s and 1990s French Fiction emerged from the towering shadow of the formalist literary debates of the fifties and sixties and reclaimed the ground of history, or narrative, of the individual self which has been the thrust of artistic endeavour for much of European history. The Author returned from the dead to entertain and tell stories, as well as to negotiate a path through traumatic experiences such as the legacy of France's colonial and wartime past, the Holocaust, the spectre of AIDS, the labyrinths of desire and personal identity. Colin Davis and Elizabeth Fallaize examine some of the most popular and some of the most challenging of texts which emerged during François Mitterrand's presidency of France (1981-1995) and relate them to the dominant literary and cultural trends of the period. The book will appeal to students at all levels who are engaged in courses in twentieth-century fiction and to readers with an interest in contemporary French culture.