Here are 100 books that Sentimental Education fans have personally recommended if you like
Sentimental Education.
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I have been a Francophile for as long as I can remember. Something about France and French literature grabbed me by the heart when I was a young man and continues to do so. I’ve lived in France twice–a year each time–and have written about those experiences in books and essays. It’s 19th-century French literature that especially draws me and has deeply influenced my own writing.
We all know the title. It’s become a record-breaking musical phenomenon. The book is a phenomenon in itself. It was a voyage I took for a few spellbound weeks, and I read it in a stone house in a small village in the South of France. It is a book of great sympathy and grace.
Victor Hugo’s heart is large—at least measured by this story of an escaped prisoner who tries to do good with his life but is pursued relentlessly by a police officer, Javert. I found with this book, as the great writers always show me, that character is all. Hugo drew me into the struggles and losses of his people so ably and memorably that I still think of them years later.
The only completely unabridged paperback edition of Victor Hugo’s masterpiece—a sweeping tale of love, loss, valor, and passion.
Introducing one of the most famous characters in literature, Jean Valjean—the noble peasant imprisoned for stealing a loaf of bread—Les Misérables ranks among the greatest novels of all time. In it, Victor Hugo takes readers deep into the Parisian underworld, immerses them in a battle between good and evil, and carries them to the barricades during the uprising of 1832 with a breathtaking realism that is unsurpassed in modern prose.
I write historical fiction based on the lives of my ancestors: Agnes Canon’s War is the story of my twice-great grandparents during the Civil War. An Irish Wife is based on their son. I write about the Gilded Age, which is only now drawing the attention of historical novelists and the wider public: the vast wealth of industrialists contrasted to the poverty of the lower classes, scandalous politics, environmental degradation, fear of and prejudices about immigrants. My ancestors lived through those days; I want to imagine how that tumultuous society affected them, how they managed, what they lost and gained, and to memorialize those stories as a way to honor them.
No glitter here. Though Germinal takes place in the 186os, it was written in 1884, and Gilded Age sensibilities haunt this tale of the crushing lives of French coal miners whose labor, hardships, and deaths fuel the excesses of Gilded Age lives. Zola’s masterpiece, with several movie adaptations to choose from.
Zola's masterpiece of working life, Germinal (1885), exposes the inhuman conditions of miners in northern France in the 1860s. By Zola's death in 1902 it had come to symbolise the call for freedom from oppression so forcefully that the crowd which gathered at his State funeral chanted 'Germinal! Germinal!'. The central figure, Etienne Lantier, is an outsider who enters the community and eventually leads his fellow-miners in a strike protesting against pay-cuts - a strike which becomes a losing battle against starvation, repression, and sabotage. Yet despite all the violence and disillusion which rock the mining community to its foundations,…
I am the son of Irish rural immigrants who at the age of nearly eighty already occupies several vanished worlds myself: London in the 1950s and 60s, the old world of the European peasantry, and a time when the greatest war in human history was still a daily presence. I spent most of my life as an academic historian writing books for an academic audience. Then, to my surprise, at the tender age of seventy, I discovered that I could write prose that had a certain grace and dignity and which seemed to move people as well as inform them. So, I began a second career as what is called a “writer.”
Josef Roth is now recognized as one of the greatest German writers of the twentieth century. As a historian myself, I was entranced by reading it by the way in which the book catches the vast temporal arc of the transformation and then fall of a society that had for centuries been a major force in European history, the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Now forgotten, this was the world of Vienna’s great resplendence, then fall.
The story is told through the generational story of one family, the von Trottas. Impending loss is conveyed alongside great affection as a whole world is lost in the disasters of the First World War. The book was first published in English in 1933. In the words of another of Josef Roth’s books, “I was there,” which he was.
THE RADETSKY MARCH is subtle and touching study of family life at the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Writing in the traditional form of the family saga, Roth nevertheless manages to bring to his story a completely individual manner which gives at the same time the detailed and intimate portrait of a life and the wider panorama of a failing dynasty. Not yet well known in English-speaking countries, Joseph Roth is one of the most distinguished Austrian writers of our century, worthy to be bracketed with Musil and Kraus.
Life is stories, man. Telling stories. Listening to stories. One day, somebody had the brilliant idea to start writing these stories down. And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since. Trading yarns. Figuring things out. Reading and writing. I wrote my first story in middle school. My first novel in college. My first published novel (This Way Madness Lies) in my late twenties. Now it’s thirty years, twenty-five novels, fifty short stories, and three books of poetry later, and I’m still as obsessed with and passionate about storytelling as I was as a young buck backpacking around Europe with a notebook and a beat-up copy of Down and Out in London and Paris stuffed into my leather satchel.
I was on an extended trip to Eastern Europe, back when Eastern Europe was not such a dandy place to visit, and I found myself with nothing to read. In a used bookstore in Prague, I found a tattered paperback, translated into English, of this next pick. It was falling apart, the pages stained by coffee and God knows what else. I bought it anyway.
And over the next few weeks, I was, for the third time, blown away by words on a page, by an author’s imagination. It’s been said that Don Quixote, written around 1600, was the first novel ever written. It may also be the greatest novel ever written. Adventure. Humor. Pathos. Crazy amounts of imagination. The Whole Damn Human Condition.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HAROLD BLOOM. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. Unless you read Spanish, you've never read Don Quixote.
I have been a Francophile for as long as I can remember. Something about France and French literature grabbed me by the heart when I was a young man and continues to do so. I’ve lived in France twice–a year each time–and have written about those experiences in books and essays. It’s 19th-century French literature that especially draws me and has deeply influenced my own writing.
Most people declare Madame Bovary to be their favorite Flaubert novel. I don’t dispute its greatness, but I find this book, published in 1869, twelve years after Madame Bovary, to be the master at his most illuminating and embracing.
Set against the revolution of 1848, the hero, Frédéric Moreau, falls helplessly in love with a married woman. I identify—not with the love of a married woman—with Moreau’s life and times as a young artist living among others like him in Paris. He and his fellow artists live their bohemian lives with ardor and hope, and the passion of youth and creativity flows wonderfully through the book.
'For certain men the stronger their desire, the less likely they are to act.'
With his first glimpse of Madame Arnoux, Frederic Moreau is convinced he has found his romantic destiny, but when he pursues her to Paris the young student is unable to translate his passion into decisive action. He also finds himself distracted by the equally romantic appeal of political action in the turbulent years leading up to the revolution of 1848, and by the attractions of three other women, each of whom seeks to make him her own: a haughty society lady, a capricious courtesan, and an…
I’ve always been fascinated by the failed revolutions of the 19th century and by the romantic socialists, democrats, and nationalists who made these revolutions. I think I have a better understanding of their world and the forces that brought them down than I have of the world I live in. But I do find in their writings remarkable echoes of my own fears and hopes about the future of democracy today.
This novel is both the story of an unconsummated love affair and an account of the experience and imaginative life of the generation of young people who came to maturity around 1840 and whose lives were either broken or redirected by the revolution of 1848.
Flaubert takes great care to establish a counterpoint between the collapse of political ideals in 1848 and the collapse of the dreams of the individual characters. But Sentimental Education can also be considered as a work of history that brings the past to life and, in the end, offers a deep and, in some ways, sympathetic picture of the inability of individuals to shape history or their own lives, in a world ruled by elemental forces that elude understanding.
A fresh and vivid translation of Flaubert's influential bildungsroman
Gustave Flaubert conceived Sentimental Education, his final complete novel, as the history of his own generation, one that failed to fulfill the promise of the Revolution of 1848. Published a few months before the start of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, it offers both a sweeping panorama of French society over three decades and an intimate bildungsroman of a young man from a small town who arrives in Paris when protests against the monarchy are increasing.
The novel's protagonist, Frederic Moreau, alternates between aimlessness and ambition as he searches for a meaningful…
I have always liked antiheroes and characters that are in some way doomed. To me, there’s something romantic about them. And over time I have come to replace the fictional protagonists of noir and horror with antiheroes from real life. With miserable authors who wrote about their own lives, where instead of gangsters or monsters, they waged battle against themselves, against their own demons and despair. Books like these have kept me company during some of the darkest periods of my life, and their unflinching honesty has inspired me to become a writer. Perhaps they can do the same for you.
This book is about a heroin addict. However, you don’t need to be a heroin addict to sympathize with its protagonist’s existential weariness—or ennui, as the French call it. I know I do. After exiting a rehabilitation clinic, he wanders around listlessly, visiting friends and acquaintances, trying to find a reason to go on, yet finding none.
The story may be better known for the excellent film adaptation by Louis Malle—which switches heroin for alcohol—yet the terse and evocative writing of the original novel nevertheless packs a punch. The fact that the protagonist was closely inspired by the author’s friend lends an element of authenticity to it, making his suffering all the more relevant.
Adapted to film by both Louis Malle and Joachim Trier, this heart-rending and tenderly wrought novel narrates the decline of an artist and heroin addict in 1920s Paris.
Pierre Drieu la Rochelle might be said to be both the Hemingway and the Fitzgerald of twentieth-century French literature, a battle-scarred veteran of the First World War whose work chronicles the trials and tribulations of a lost generation, a man about town, a heartbreaker with a broken heart, a literary stylist whose work is as tough as it is lyrical and polished. Politically compromised as Drieu came to be by his affiliation…
I am a French-American writer with a passion for young adult stories and flawed female characters. Born and raised in France in a household without a TV, I spent my entire childhood reading avidly, which in turn led me to study Literature and Film. In fact, most of my life, I have been inspired by novels that offer windows into new worlds that open up possibilities. Some of the novels from the list below feature some of my favorite characters, and provide insights into other worlds and other times.
Madame Bovary is the story of a woman who endlessly struggles to escape the banalities of her provincial life.
This novel makes you feel like you’re in the head of its main characters: first Charles Bovary, then Emma, his second wife and the novel’s eponymous hero. It is so realistic that upon its release, the author was taken to court for public offense against morality.
Still very modern, Emma’s drama is, to me, the discrepancy between illusions and reality. Her quest for happiness outside of her own condition and her inability to be satisfied with what she has are themes that, I believe, still resonate today.
Flaubert's erotically charged and psychologically acute portrayal of a married woman's affair caused a moral outcry on its publication in 1857. Its heroine, Emma Bovary, is stifled by provincial life as the wife of a doctor. An ardent devourer of sentimental novels, she seeks escape in fantasies of high romance, in voracious spending and, eventually, in adultery. But even her affairs bring her disappointment, and when real life continues to fail to live up to her romantic expectations, the consequences are devastating. It was deemed so lifelike that many women claimed they were the model for…
“I didn’t like the characters.” “I couldn’t relate.” Whenever I hear someone bring up the matter of “likability” a single thought roars through my head: How ‘likable’ do you really think you are? A main purpose of fiction is to illuminate those nasty thoughts we all have but are rarely willing to admit. A book should be intimate, uncomfortably so, just as to actually occupy another person’s mind and body would be. It also seems to me “the characters” referenced by these kinds of critiques are always women. We expect fictional men to shock us and to struggle with their own desires; why should we expect women to only charm?
Our protagonist, Adèle, is a sex addict in a sexless marriage, longing to escape the quotidian boredom of motherhood. Her desires are clear. “She wants to be devoured, sucked, swallowed whole.” She also wants to not want this. The interesting question the novel poses indirectly: What do we want of this character? Slimani (of The Perfect Nanny fame) writes so deliciously about Adèle’s desires the answer is clear—we long to watch Adèle falter, we want to hear every terrible thought in her head.
"Fascinating . . . Adele has glanced at the covenant of modern womanhood--the idea that you can have it all or should at least die trying--and detonated it." --The New York Times Book Review
"[A] fierce, uncanny thunderbolt of a book." --Entertainment Weekly
From the bestselling author of The Perfect Nanny--one of the 10 Best Books of the Year of The New York Times Book Review--as well as Sex and Lies and In the Country of Others, her prizewinning novel about a sex-addicted woman in Paris
I fell in love with opera history as an undergraduate exchange student in Vienna and went on to pursue my passion in graduate school. Rather than writing about opera composers and their music, I chose the unusual path of studying famous singers from the nineteenth century, especially the prima donnas who exerted extraordinary authority over composers, theater directors, and spectators. In my books and articles, I focus on the power of divas to thrill audiences and to shape the musical culture of which they are an integral part. The books I am recommending explore the lives and careers of some of the most fascinating prima donnas of the nineteenth century.
Pauline Viardot (1821-1910) was one of the most celebrated prima donnas of the nineteenth century, but she was much more than a typical diva. She was also one of the most versatile artists of the era, a talented composer, arranger, teacher, autograph collector, entrepreneur, salonnière, and promoter of early music. While fictionalized, this novel sticks closely to historical events of her life, focusing on her marriage to Louis Viardot, her long-lasting affair with Russian author Ivan Turgenev, and the unconventional and loving bonds that formed between these three extraordinary artists. If you’re looking for historical fiction about one of the most fascinating divas of the nineteenth century, An Unofficial Marriage is a great choice.
For Fans of Alexander Chee's best-selling novel, The Queen of the Night and opera fans everywhere.
Set against the backdrop of the tumultuous events of 19th century Europe, An Unofficial Marriage dramatizes the equally tumultuous real-life love affair of two great artists—the famous Russian author, Ivan Turgenev, and the celebrated French opera singer, Pauline Viardot. From the moment he encounters her on the St. Petersburg stage, Ivan falls completely for Pauline. Though Pauline returns his feelings, she is bound by her singular passion for her art and her devotion to her gentle, older husband, Louis. Nevertheless, Ivan pursues Pauline across…
