In December 2015, six months before his death at the age of 93, Yves Bonnefoy concluded what was to be his last major text in prose, L'echarpe rouge, translated here as The Red Scarf. In this unique book, described by the poet as "an anamnesis" – a f...

Velazquez. Poussin. Carvaggio. Bernini. Despite their disparate backgrounds, these greats of European Baroque art converged at one remarkable place in time: Rome, 1630. In response to the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church turned to these ma...

In "The Red Sofa", we meet Anne, a young woman setting off on the Trans-Siberian Railway in order to find her former lover, Gyl, who left twenty years before. As the train moves across post-Soviet Russia and its devastated landscapes, Anne reflects o...

Praised by Paul Auster as "one of the rare poets in the history of literature to have sustained the highest level of artistic excellence throughout an entire lifetime", Yves Bonnefoy is widely considered the foremost French poet of his generation. Pr...

As a maverick philosopher unafraid of challenging the ideas and methods of his colleagues, Clement Rosset's work attempts to connect sometimes-lofty academic philosophy with the concerns of everyday life. For decades, he has worked to illuminate some...

There are few if any voices more distinct in contemporary French literature than that of Pascal Quignard, a prolific writer of rare erudition and elegance. Essayist, critic, translator, novelist and musician, Quignard attempts here an ambitious amalg...