XCiTes: The Flamingo Book of New French Writing

Rather as Britain did in the 1980s, France has in the 1990s seemingly begun to accept and analyze, rather than resist and deny, the irrefutable fact that it is now a bubbling bouillabaisse of cultures, attitudes, faiths, languages and traditions.  France now puts out some credibly cool and interesting pop music; its World Cup-winning national football team now has more exotically surnamed, fantastically loose-limbed players than any other; its film directors are getting less cerebral and more visceral, all the great theoreticians have been toppled from their pedestals and a political philosopher is the last thing any self-respecting young French thing wants to be. All this alteration is being reflected and refracted in French literature, which has woken from decades of barren formalism to new life. Here are the rising young stars of French literature, from the brutal post-feminism of Virginie Despentes to the "noir" thrills of Tonino Benaquista.