100 books like Et toute ma sympathie

Plenty of Resistance activity in the Lot, certainly, but it was also the home of the vicious anti-semite Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, who rounded up many Jews to their deaths on behalf of the Vichy Government. Years later, Carmen Callil, founder of Virago, was seeking psychiatric help when she came across his daughter Anne, a psychiatrist, who had been abandoned by her despicable parents.

It was Anne’s death by suicide that set Callil off on a stunning attempt to track the life of Darquier, a drunkard, a rapist, and a man of few if any redeeming features. He disgraced his family and native town, where his father was mayor of Cahors, capital of the Lot. He was sentenced to death but, protected by Franco, died a free man in Spain.

“Only lice were ever gassed at Auschwitz” was his mantra as he sent children off to the gas chambers.

Not called a classic for nothing, the book covers the rivers Dordogne, Lot, and Tarn. A pioneering travel writer, Freda White was aided in her research by a little Morris Minor, her Oxford history degree, her good French, her journalism, her erudition, and a curious mind. Anyone who wants to understand the Lot in all its many guises should start here. It is written in an evocative and accessible prose.

Louis Malle was one of the first film directors to demythologise de Gaulle’s spin that most of France was engaged in resistance to the Nazis. Lacombe Lucien was set in the Lot, Malle’s adoptive home, and he asked for the help of Modiano, Nobel Literary prize winner, to write the screenplay.

Lucien, too young to join the fierce if small Lot Resistance, dropped accidentally into the hands of the Gestapo instead, and through them met and fell for the cultured Jewish Parisienne, France Horn. A strange pairing of young people whose different lives had been interrupted by war, they fled both the Gestapo and the Resistance, hiding from a troubled world in the wilds of the causse, where Lucien, the peasant boy, was in his element. There they blissfully awaited the inevitable.

W.S. Merwin was an American Poet Laureate and ecologist manqué. Travelling around Europe after university, by the time he reached the Lot he was already something of a linguist and also a Buddhist. He settled into a simple life in a house near Loubressac, exploring the Causse de Gramat until he knew it intimately. He conversed with the shepherdesses in Occitan, the language of his beloved troubadours, exploring the ancient transhumance trails, the unique flora, fauna, and culture of the limestone causse. This is a poet’s book and he knew and understood the causse as few outsiders ever do. The Lost Upland is a book about the causse.

Wolfert made her name with her book Couscous and Other Food of Morocco, first published in 1973. This groundbreaking book was not only the first time an American writer’s topic was North African food but Wolfert explored for the first time its culinary anthropology. This book on southwest France might even be better than her couscous book. Its depth of understanding and explanation is amazing. Its thoroughness is unparalleled. Its fastidiousness might annoy some readers, but one will never claim there wasn’t enough detail. Follow this book and you will be able to make confit de canard to use in your equally authentic cassoulet of southwest France.

This is the first book of a fictionalized family history, starting with the omniscient narrator’s maternal grandparents and paternal aunt, who are all born in the late 1880s: the World War I generation. The story takes place near Nantes, which until 1956 was part of Brittany, but then was administratively moved to a new department, the Loire Atlantic—though most people in Nantes and Brittany continue to believe the Nantois are Breton. As with many things French, the issue is far from settled.

Rouaud creates character through vignettes—and they’re wonderful: grandpa smoking; grandpa driving; grandma complaining about grandpa smoking and driving; their car—the infamous, uncomfortable, 2CV, deux chevaux—in the rain, the wind, on hills, having to wipe the windshield by hand to see, clearing grandma’s side, not grandpa’s, whose vision is blocked by pouring rain, streaking mud, and cigarette smoke. The rain leaks through the windows, the vents, and canvas roof.… show more.

This is the heartwarming and inspiring story of the journey a great chef took from serving as a lowly apprentice to becoming a leader in establishing new food traditions in America. I especially enjoyed the many funny stories about Pepin and his family. Warning: the book includes many of his favorite recipes that will cause hunger pangs as you read the book. 

A warm inn, and a stranger’s tale gather together a group of travelers as they become fascinated by the story of three gifted children that is sweeping the land. I loved the way this book brought the story of the people in the inn and the marvelous children together step by step. Peppered with real historical figures and legends this book is a must-read for the middle-grade medieval enthusiast. 

Orwell is my favorite nonfiction writer.

This is a workplace memoir in part because of the engaging, disgusting scenes where he labors as a plongeur (dishwasher) in a grimy French restaurant. But in a broader sense, it’s a book about the hard work of being poor.

Every sentence is intelligent and the overall thrust is deeply moral—Orwell’s calling card.

I love Stein’s unapologetic and brazen queerness at a time when that was not exactly appreciated. Toklas was Stein’s lifelong lover, with whom she shared her life in Paris.

To me, this book feels like a love letter. My favorite scene is the one in which Toklas and Stein invite the struggling artists of Paris to dinner and then sit them opposite paintings they themselves have made in order to keep them from arguing. Stein’s wit is as lively as ever in this book, and–it’s simply the best example of a hoax autobiography I can think of. And it certainly puts paid to any notion that an autobiographical text might be stable or even a little truthy.

Words do marvelous things as they emerge out of Stein’s brilliant mind.