Books for your next evening.
Essays, comics and literary works approach love, friendship, money and identity through different forms of writing.
13 works from our cultural catalogue, introduced in English. Follow each profile for context and its official source.
Books
À propos d’amour
bell hooks
bell hooks treats love as a practice that people build. This feminist essay examines the obstacles patriarchal norms place in the way of relationships, drawing on moral philosophy and psychology.
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Love Me Tender
Constance Debré
Flammarion presents Love Me Tender as a continuation of Play Boy. After identity, the focus moves towards the other person and towards love, including maternal love and other forms of attachment.
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Réinventer l’amour
Mona Chollet
Mona Chollet examines how patriarchal norms shape heterosexual relationships, romantic expectations and representations of the couple.
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Au-delà de la pénétration
Martin Page
Martin Page questions the central place given to penetration and the gender norms associated with sexuality. The essay also includes personal accounts.
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La Conversation des sexes
Manon Garcia
Subtitled Philosophie du consentement, Manon Garcia’s essay examines sexual consent, power relations and the conditions needed for equal relationships.
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Les sentiments du prince Charles
Liv Strömquist
Liv Strömquist’s graphic essay explores love and the roles assigned to women and men, bringing together cultural references, celebrity stories and social analysis.
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King Kong théorie
Virginie Despentes
Virginie Despentes writes about models of femininity, gender norms and the place given to people who do not fit them. Her essay adopts a personal, combative voice.
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Le couple et l’argent
Titiou Lecoq
Titiou Lecoq investigates economic inequalities between women and men and the ways life as a couple can deepen them. The book also addresses domestic work and attitudes towards money.
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Le génie lesbien
Alice Coffin
Alice Coffin brings her experience as a journalist and activist into an argument about lesbian visibility. She examines the media, power relations and the place given to women.
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La volonté de changer
bell hooks
bell hooks examines what masculine ideals do to men’s emotional lives. Intimacy, work and sexual expectations run through this feminist essay, published in French by Divergences in 2021 in Alex Taillard’s translation.
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Nos puissantes amitiés
Alice Raybaud
Living with friends, making a family or growing old together: Alice Raybaud investigates the place given to friendship. Interviews meet cultural references and social-science research to consider lives not organised solely around couples.
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Un appartement sur Uranus
Paul B. Preciado
Paul B. Preciado collects columns published in Libération, begun under the name Beatriz and continued as Paul. They describe a transformation through testosterone outside the medical and legal protocol, then turn to other struggles.
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Je suis un monstre qui vous parle
Paul B. Preciado
In November 2019, Paul B. Preciado addressed 3,500 psychoanalysts in Paris, drawing on Kafka’s A Report to an Academy. Grasset published the speech in June 2020 with the subtitle Rapport pour une académie de psychanalystes.
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