The word from Paris : essays on modern French thinkers and writers

In this wide-ranging collection, Sturrock brings together his writings on literary figures as diverse as Marcel Proust and Roland Barthes, Sartre and Celine, Camus and Perec. An elegant guide to twentieth-century French literature and thought. "The Word from Paris" is a lucid and accessible guide to the literature and thought of twentieth-century France. John Sturrock ranges over the broad landscape of French writing, clarifying the various intellectual movements that have marked its recent history. In a series of definitive essays, John Sturrock discusses writers such as Proust, Celine, Sarraute and Perec; thinkers such as Foucault, Althusser, Lacan and Derrida; and that peculiarly French figure, the writer/thinker: Sartre, Camus and Barthes. He analyses such developments as Existentialism, the New Novel, Structuralism and the OuLiPo. This elegant and illuminating journey through both celebrated and sometimes relatively neglected texts is an invaluable initiation into French intellectual and literary culture this century. John Sturrock has written for many years about French literature and thought, and here presents a wonderfully accessible guide to the major figures of the last fifty years. Reviewing the various movements that have dominated the French intellectual scene - existentialism, the nouveau roman, structuralism, the OuLIPo - he illustrates how their proponents inspire and excite