sampling french fiction

One of the attractions of Oxford is, of course, that we have our very own island of French culture, the Maison Francaise d'Oxford (sorry, don't know how to do this accent in html), with a library and a busy events schedule. One of the freebies one can pick up from there is a collection of excerpts of recent French novels, in French and English, with details of the authors. Cultures France publishes this twice a year in the hope of attracting translation deals for these books.

Issue 3 of this publication (nominally out Sept. 08) has just shown up at the MFO, and if that's too far away, you can download the text samples here.

They also publish other magazines, including Cultures Sud which also looks interesting and covers the literature of Africa, the caribbean, and the Indian ocean area.