Travel and Cultural Background
A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle (1989) — The book that introduced Provence to a generation of Anglophone readers. Some find it a little smug, but it captures the light, the food, and the exasperating pace of rural French life perfectly. Its sequel Toujours Provence is equally enjoyable.
The Identity of France by Fernand Braudel (1986) — A monumental history of France by one of its greatest historians, tracing how geography, climate, and agriculture shaped French civilization. Dense but rewarding.
Almost French by Sarah Turnbull (2002) — An Australian journalist moves to Paris and navigates French social codes, bureaucracy, and the unwritten rules of French life. Warm, funny, and honest about the difficulties.
History
Citizens by Simon Schama (1989) — The definitive popular history of the French Revolution in English. Vivid, opinionated, and excellent.
D-Day: June 6, 1944 by Stephen Ambrose — The standard popular account of the Normandy landings. Essential reading before visiting the beaches and cemeteries of Normandy.
Napoleon by Andrew Roberts (2014) — A comprehensive and sympathetic biography of France's most consequential figure, drawing on sources unavailable to earlier biographers.
Fiction
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (1862) — Set against the backdrop of post-Napoleonic Paris and the 1832 uprising. Hugo's portrait of poverty, law, and redemption is as compelling now as when it was written.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (1857) — The definitive French provincial novel. Flaubert's portrait of boredom and romantic delusion in rural Normandy is still shocking in its precision.
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926) — Much of it is set in Paris and the Basque country of northern Spain. Hemingway's Paris of the 1920s remains one of the most vivid literary portraits of the city.
Suite Française by Irène Némirovsky (2004, posthumously published) — A novel written during the German occupation of France, found in a notebook decades after its author was killed at Auschwitz. Heartbreaking and extraordinary.