World literature tour: France

Well, that was fun. Great recommendations for the German leg of our world literature tour, from Frank Schätzing's Der Schwarm – according to dholliday "a bit like The Abyss meets SeaQuest DSV meets The Day After Tomorrow ... but far superior, obviously" – to Max Knight's translation of Christian Mogenstern, which AS called "a work of art in itself", adapting "both content and rhyme whilst staying true to the wisdom as well as the cheeky charm of the original".

A fascinating discussion, too, about fantasy literature in German, which according to Agelster is "very samey … imitating successful British or American authors" – a tendency monsterofmiskolc puts down to a Romantic ideal of "Literature as Serious Art and Vehicle of Self-Expression an Writer as Self-Contained Genius" – though marcusspeh would argue it's "not actually true". And an invigorating debate about nationhood and identity into the bargain. Werkmeister may well be right that "Bavaria is more different from Berlin than Austrian culture is from Bavarian culture" – though I suspect you'll find that position a little trickier to maintain in Vienna than in Munich – but despite the complications and convolutions of European history, it seems to me that the brute simplicity of national boundaries give us as good a way of dividing up the world of literature as any.

So let's do it again. This week: France. Ah, Voltaire, Dumas, Stendhal, Verlaine, Queneau, Darrieussecq … it's like pain au chocolat and a café au lait, like Aznavour and Charles Trenet, like a stroll down the Champs on a summer's day … but enough of that already. To business.

Just there, down below, are those fabulous boxes of technology, which will garner your recommendations, and create, by pure technical wizardry a spreadsheet of combined knowledge – just like the one we made for Germany. The first box asks for the country concerned – in this case, France. All we need from you then is a title, an author, maybe a translator – though great books about France which haven't been translated yet are more than welcome – and why it's such a great book. And yes, AggieH, we want non-fiction. We even want books written by authors who aren't French which have something to say about French life, French culture. I'm off to recommend Jean-Pierre Ohl's Mr Dick – it's not what you're thinking – and Diderot's Jacques le fataliste, mostly because it's funny. But make free with the comments down below as well – maybe someone can tell me why those Frenchies are so obsessed with all that autofiction ...