The most recommended books about Southern France

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.

Anyone who wants to read a love story – all of us, surely – has to start with this story of young love set on the coast of the South of France in the early 20th century. Colette’s prose has been well matched by her translators and she’s simply a jewel of a writer and the first woman who really told the truth about love and sexuality.

M.F.K. Fisher was not only one of our greatest food writers, she was one of our greatest writers, period. Fisher lived for long periods in France, and the result of two of these sojourns is Two Towns in Provence, which is about Marseille and Aix-en-Provence. These two iconic towns are a mere forty miles apart in distance but worlds apart in temperament, character, and spirit. Fisher captures both of their personalities with her exquisite prose, guided by her sympathy and love for these cities and their people. She is especially wonderful at capturing Marseille, a city that has been called mysterious, even unknowable. You cannot have a better guide to two of France’s most renowned and remarkable cities.

I went to school in France twice and have visited that country ten times, I think, so reading the first of this series was like being back in the Dordogne region that I love so much.

The pace is gentle, the characters glow, the story transports to one of the most beautiful and historic parts of France... After reading Bruno, Chief of Police, I plowed on through all the subsequent novels in this series—I think there are 17 last time I checked. All fun, relaxing reads with good police plots.

It’s fun to compare French policing with what we know of American cops and courts—a very different system, sometimes better than ours, sometimes not. I recommend this book because, if you enjoy it, you’ll have lots more pleasure ahead with the whole series!! 

I first discovered author Steve Berry with the publication of his excellent novel, The Templar Legacy, one of a series involving Cotton Malone, a retired security operative turned conspiracy investigator. Berry weaves a complex story about the lost treasures of the medieval Knights Templar, and their modern-day attempts to regain power. As in all of Berry’s books, there is a well-researched historical background, plenty of plot twists, and, of course, murders. I particularly like Berry’s attention to historical detail, his rich description, and sense of fatality. Berry’s writing inspired me enough to ask him to be a cover reviewer for my book. 

An absolute classic, this book has had two subsequent editions since its first publication in 1957, each with a new foreword and epilogue. It depicts the pre-Peter Mayle Provence, primitive and resourceful, naïve and worldly wise, generous and hard-working, that Wylie discovered when he spent a year observing life in the village of Roussillon (disguised as Peyrane) in 1950-51. A typical Provençal village, Peyrane—population just over 300, one café-tabac, one hotel, two general stores, and one butcher—was still largely self-sufficient in terms of food, many families owning chickens and rabbits and cultivating a garden. Wylie writes with humour, warmth, and genuine affection for its inhabitants; I loved his account of the firemen's banquet, the attention to detail in the planning process, the banquet itself, and the post-banquet meditations.

No one wrote about the South of France with more affection and understanding than Marcel Pagnol. He was a novelist, playwright, director, and memoirist. Pagnol’s family had a small house in the hills near Marseille where they spent summers. His book, My Father’s Glory, is about those months Pagnol spent there as a child and about his family, mostly his father. (The companion book, My Mother’s Castle, concerns his mother more.) The story of his aunt’s sweet, delicate courtship with his eventual uncle is worth reading the book alone. If you’re like me, you will come away from reading this book wishing you’d been part of Pagnol’s kind and joyous family and his life in this little corner of France. The good news is that with this book, you very nearly are.

In my opinion this is one of the great novels about adolescence. What makes it so special is that it is deliciously French and amoral. The story of a French teenage girl, Cecile, and her father. They are a team. You might almost call them a couple. Cecile accompanies her father everywhere including to casinos and bars. She accepts his mistresses. Matters take a more macabre turn when her father invites one of his ladies to holiday with them in the south of France and Cecile learns that he intends to marry this particular woman. Françoise Sagan was eighteen when she wrote this, her first novel. Within months of its publication she became an overnight sensation. The writing is sexy and chic. Sagan perfectly describes the French Riviera in the mid-fifties and a woman’s role in society back then. It was an instant classic and deserves its place in the… show more.

In taking on any project dealing with the origins of art or religion in any time and place I have found Pfeiffer’s book to be an excellent and easily readable starting point. 

As an experienced journalist and writer, his ability to take on difficult subjects in the human origins story in a way the average reader can comprehend and enjoy keeps his work relevant, despite the passing years.

Following his own path through some of the art caves of southern France many years later, I found a reread of this book and the still relevant questions it asks and attempts to answer a virtual guidebook to my own understanding of this rapidly changing subject. Profusely illustrated and supported with color photos, this book challenges the reader to begin elevating both the abilities and complexity of our stone age ancestors in ways we may not have considered or even thought possible.… show more.

Most everyone knows Vincent van Gogh spent time in the South of France. Most of us know he was a tortured soul and that he spent time in an asylum in Saint Rémy. And most of us know his wonderful painting, The Starry Night, which was painted in Saint Rémy. Since so much of the exquisite joy of the South of France is visual, who better to represent that visual beauty than Vincent van Gogh, one of the greatest painters to ever put brush to canvas? But what you may not know is that Vincent was one of our greatest letter writers as well. He wrote many to his brother, Theo, and reading these letters you cannot help but see Provence through Van Gogh’s remarkable eyes.