Fiction is much more enlightening about a country and its people than are statistics, and if we want to find out and understand what a nation is really like, we must read its literature. In French Tales, Helen Constantine offers a panoramic view of French society and culture as seen through its short fiction, ranging through all twenty-two regions of France and featuring the work of an engaging collection of writers.

Here are stories as varied as the regions of France themselves—dramatic, tragic, comic, poetic, ghostly, satirical. Readers will find both famous and little-known writers—among them Guy de Maupassant, Emile Zola, Daniel Boulanger, Didier Daeninckx, and Colette—and will wander the country from Provence and Alsace to Ile-de-France and Normandy. The themes are timeless—marriage and the dealings between the sexes; the nature of friendship; the misery and the memory of war—and the stories themselves reflect the rich ethnic diversity of France. Thus, Christian Garcin's story set in Lille has Flemish associations; Prosper Mérimée's Mateo Falcone, about an honor killing in Corsica, is in many respects more Italian than French; and Marcel Aymé's story about Arbi, an Arab in Paris living at the bottom of a cul-de-sac, illustrates only too well the plight of many North Africans who settled in the larger cities—Paris and Marseille especially.

Following the model of the highly successful Paris Tales, also translated by Helen Constantine, each story is illustrated with a striking photograph and there is a map indicating the position of the French regions. There is an introduction and notes to accompany the stories and a selection of further readings.