From the publication of his first book in 1953, Yves Bonnefoy has been considered the most important and influential French poet since World War II. A prolific writer, critic, and translator, Bonnefoy continues to compose groundbreaking new work sixt...

A controversial figure of the postwar French literary and cultural scene, Marguerite Duras has exerted a powerful hold on readers around the world. This volume of interviews – hailed on its French publication as Duras's "secret confession" – offers r...

"In 1968-1969 I wanted to die, that is to say, stop living, being killed, but it was blocked on all sides", wrote Helene Cixous, esteemed French feminist, playwright, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist. Instead of suicide, she began to dream...

"Baudelaire is indeed the greatest exemplar in modern poetry in any language", said T. S. Eliot. We experience Baudelaire in myriad ways through his multifaceted writing. His sensuous poems – dreams of escape to an impossible, preferably tropical, el...

While presenting the Nobel Prize in Literature to J. M. G. Le Clezio in 2008, the Nobel Committee called him the "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization". In M...

In recent years, social workers have raised a new concern about the appearance of a new category among the working poor. Even employed, there are people so overburdened by the cost of living and so under compensated that they cannot afford a place to...

Stella Vinitchi Radulescu's poetry dwells in spaces of paradox, seeking out the words, metaphors, and images that capture both the peaceful stillness of snow and the desperate cry of human experience. "A Cry in the Snow" often draws on these two fert...

Rich and multilayered, with elements of both memoir and fiction, Dominique Edde's "Kite" defies categorization. Beginning in the 1960s and ending in the late '80s, it is at once a narrative of a passionate, and ultimately tragic, relationship between...

"The Dancing Other" takes readers to France and Martinique to reveal the struggles of people who belong both places, but never quite feel at home in either. Suzanne Dracius tells the story of Rehvana, a woman who feels she is too black to fit in when...

This play by renowned poet and political activist Aime Cesaire recounts the tragic death of Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Congo Republic and an African nationalist hero. "A Season in the Congo" follows Lumumba's efforts to free the...