Much like English, French is spoken around the world. From Quebec to Haiti, Algeria to Benin, Vietnam to French Polynesia, there are French-speakers (or francophones) on every continent. These French-language communities make up what is called the Francosphere and have produced some of the language’s most beautiful literature.
Much of it falling under the categories of colonial or post-colonial literature, francophone literature often centers the themes of ethnic history, violence at the hands of French and Belgian colonists, political revolution, and the challenges (and unique possibilities) of writing in French, the language of the colonizer. Many of France’s former colonies are multilingual, speaking French and one or more native languages, or possess a creole, a hybrid language created from French and often multiple other European and indigenous languages. This linguistic diversity is part of what makes francophone literature so expressive and fascinating.
Check out one (or more) of the following books, each written in French and translated into English and each giving voice to a different corner of the Francosphere!
What lonely fate befalls the most beautiful Tutsi woman in Nyamata? Why does the butter-churning gourd lie empty and where have the cows gone? How, after days with no food, do you shake the inviting warmth of eternal sleep? Igifu is a map to political exile in late-20th-century Rwanda. Enjoy folkloric sentences that slowly unfold, the rhythm of Kinyarwanda words, and glimpses into Tutsi lifeways ever-evolving in the face of ethnic and colonial violence.
At its core, the story of Slave Old Man is simple: a runaway old man is hunted by a ravenous slave-catching dog. And yet, Patrick Chamoiseau achieves unbounded insight through his electrified prose. In a vigorous stew of Martinican Creole and French, he sensuously depicts the natural landscape of his island home, from the sugarcane fields prowled by Master and his mythic hellhound to the dark, primordial forest through which a seemingly docile slave old man, against all odds and expectations, seeks freedom.
“Tituba, a slave originating from the West Indies and probably practicing ‘hoodoo.’” From a single line of the real-life proceedings of the 1692 Salem Witch Trials, Guadeloupean author Maryse Condé imagined I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, the tale of an enslaved girl from Barbados who, by a reclusive African healer, is raised and inaugurated into the world of African witchcraft. Tituba’s journey to Salem and trial as a witch is only a single piece of Condé’s epic narrative, which gives voice to this nearly forgotten character in transatlantic history.
A Senegalese soldier fighting in the trenches of WWI reels from the slaying of his childhood friend and seeks revenge. Shedding light on the unique plight of Black soldiers enlisted in Europe’s war from the then French colony of Senegal, At Night All Blood Is Black is a bone-chilling elegy on the all-consuming horror of war and the profound love felt for a fallen brother.
After lunch, while the men are napping, a group of Iranian woman sip tea and talk candidly about sex, marriage, and love. Based on the women of graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi's childhood, Embroideries is a casual read that is warm and revelatory. Whether it's a lesson on how to fake your virginity, keep your husband faithful, or escape an arranged marriage, gather 'round and hear these close-knit gals tell all.
Ru is an immigration odyssey broken into 113 jumbled fragments, each a carefully rendered memory. Riding Uncle's Vespa through Saigon, erecting shelter in a Malaysian refugee camp, glimpsing snow through an airplane window. In this fictionalized account of her own harrowing immigration journey, Canadian-Vietnamese author Kim Thuy explores familial love: her mother's, hardened by war, and her own, molded by Canada, which she deploys for her two young sons and for family members lost.
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