France Archives

France

Old Master

By Marcel Proust (1871–1922), from an essay included in Chardin and Rembrandt, which will be published next month by David Zwirner Books as part of a new series featuring exemplary…

Europe’s Hamilton Moment

by Harper’s Magazine,

The euro and its discontents

Front Runner

by Elisabeth Zerofsky,

Marine Le Pen’s campaign to make France great again

In Hayange

by Valérie Igounet, Vincent Jarousseau,

In March 2014, Marine Le Pen’s National Front took charge of eleven municipalities, among them Hayange, a city of 16,000 in northeastern France, where the unemployment rate rose to 15…

Death Watch

by Sophie Calle,

By Sophie Calle, a French conceptual artist, from an interview with Eleanor Wachtel for CBC Radio One that was published in the Winter 2016 issue of Brick. Her work Pas…

Blanket Security

by Thomas Chatterton Williams,

By Thomas Chatterton Williams. Williams is the author of the memoir Losing My Cool, published by Penguin Press in 2010.

Djamel Beghal (detail)

The Ultimate Terrorist Factory

by Scott Sayare,

Are French prisons incubating extremism?

Power in Paris

by Rebecca Solnit,

Can the earth be saved by bureaucrats in long meetings, reciting jargon and acronyms while surrounded by leaning towers of documents? That is what’s supposed to happen in France this…

Invisible City

by Justin E. H. Smith,

By Justin E. H. Smith, from a work in progress. Smith’s fourth book, The Philosopher: A History in Six Types (Princeton), will be published in June. At the end of August, the oldest…

Riding the Night

by John Masefield,

All the way, at odd times, far off, with neither sense nor sequence, the guns have sounded almost like the noises of peace — blasting or pile-driving. Now, outside the…