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Daunt Books Children's Short Story Competition 2013

Western Europe

• France
• Benelux
• Germany
• Austria
• Switzerland

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  Le Bal and Snow in Autumn by Irene Nemirovsky

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  Two beguiling, Chekhovian novellas republished in the wake of the success of 'Suite Francaise'. The author's prodigious gifts of observation and description are once again in evidence. Each can be read in one sitting with great satisfaction.

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  Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

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  Perhaps the 21st century's most significant publishing event thus far was the discovery of this lost manuscript by one of interwar France's finest novelists. Amidst the chaos of occupation Nemirovsky set out to write her own 'War and Peace' before she inevitably fell prey to the Nazi war machine. Chronicling first a group of Parisians and second the inhabitants of a small French town, the novel, though strictly unfinished, teems with wonderful characters and with moments of great humanity as well as evil. Perceptive and remarkable, this is essential reading.

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  The Wine of Solitude by Irene Nemirovsky

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  First published in 1936, The Wine of Solitude is considered to be Némirovsky's most autobiographical novel, detailing a young girl's relationship with her beautiful but vain and neglectful mother, Bella. As Helene grows older, she quietly nurtures a blossoming hatred for her mother, until the day that she realises that her youth, beauty and endurance have endowed her with an intoxicating power that might be of great use.

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  Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

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  A pioneer of erotica, Nin lived in Paris from 1924 to 1939. The sensual pieces collected here were written for an anonymous collector in the 1940s and were not published together until thirty years later, when they met with great controversy and acclaim.

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  In the Dutch Mountains by Cees Nooteboom

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  A charming fable in which a portly Spanish writer sits down to create a fairy tale, imagining a vast Netherlands that stretches to the highest peaks of Europe and making it the home of a pair of circus-performing lovers.

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  The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer

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  On the eve of the Second World War, a Hungarian-Jewish student arrives in Paris with one suitcase and a mysterious letter, the contents of which will alter the course of his life. Orringer’s debut novel is a haunting story about the terrifying uncertainty of war, set against the backdrop of Hungary and Paris.

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  The Chatelet Apprentice by Jean-Francois Parot

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  Paris, 1761. The city lies in the grip of immorality and crime as young police officer Nicolas Le Floch begins a search for a missing colleague that soon becomes a murder investigation. The first in an excellent new series, Parot conjures with admirable panache the spirit of the period, and his plotting is superb.

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  The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears

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  Three stories are deftly interwoven in this dark and compelling novel of Provence. Three men, each living through turbulent moments of history - the collapse of the Roman Empire, the Black Death and WWII - are haunted by their love for an extraordinary woman. Combining the visceral pleasure of a thriller with the heady heights of a philosophical investigation, this is first-rate.

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  The Fairy Gunmother by Daniel Pennac

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  Pennac is criminally overlooked in the UK, yet 'The Fairy Gunmother' has achieved cult status all over Europe and deserves to be read as widely as any Parisian crime novel. Populated with bizarre characters, shot-through with irreverent humour and almost maniacally inventive, this is a mystery with a difference. Try it.

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  Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe

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  The father of detective fiction sets the most famous of these gothic tales in a fictional street in Paris.

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  Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

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  Volume one of Proust's peerless novel 'In Search of Lost Time'. In extraordinary prose that shimmers and weaves our solipsistic narrator begins his irresistible excavation of the days of his youth and beyond. Committed readers will be rewarded with one of the greatest literary journeys ever conceived. This revised version of Kilmartin and Scott-Moncrief's classic translation is still rightly regarded as the best.

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  Zazie in the Metro by Raymond Queneau

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  First published in the late 1950s, this comic cult classic tells of an impish, foul-mouth country girl who visits Paris. Wanting only to ride the famous metro but finding it closed by a strike, she must seek amusement and adventure elsewhere. Stylish, witty and charming.

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  All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque

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  An incredibly moving account of life in the trenches told by a young German soldier. Powerful, yet almost unbearable reading as the narrator and his boyish, lively, eighteen year old friends endure unspeakable horrors.

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  Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys

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  Rhys is best known for 'Wide Sargasso Sea' but also wrote brilliantly of Paris. In this moving and powerfully reticent novel we meet Sophia Jansen, a young woman seeking refuge from her dark past in random encounters and studied indifference. Sad yet elating.

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  Selected Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke

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  A wonderful collection of the great modern lyrical poet's finest work.

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  Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

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  In July 1942 Sarah hides her brother in a secret room to protect him from the French police, rounding up Parisian Jews to send to Auschwitz. Julia, a journalist in contemporary Paris investigating this half-forgotten era begins to unravel Sarah's story. Shocking and informative about a dark time in Parisian history.

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  The Spider's Web by Joseph Roth

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  Roth's magnificent first novel is a masterclass in efficient prose, painting in a mere 112 pages a chillingly realistic picture of the conspiracies that were to undermine the Weimer Republic and usher in the era of Nazism.

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  The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

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  This is Roth's masterpiece and a gem of 20th Century literature not to be missed. It is the story of four generations of the Trottas, a family of soldiers and bureaucrats, and follows the Austro-Hungarian monarchy from the height of its power to descent into the war that would lead to its collapse. In his portrayal of Emperor Franz Joseph, Roth pioneered the use of an historical figure in fiction, and his book draws out brilliantly the comedy and tragedy of the Trottas and their world.

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  Bonjour Tristesse & A Certain Smile by Francoise Sagan

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  Two cult French classics in one volume. Sagan was still a precocious teenager when Bonjour Tristesse made her a literary superstar in 1954. It tells of Cecile, a young girl who takes it upon herself to interfere in her father's love life while conducting her own summer affair, while 'A Certain Smile' follows a similarly autobiographical Dominique as she embarks on a tryst with an older man. Both novellas are delightfully witty and playfully amoral.

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  The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery

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  A pilot forced to land in the Sahara Desert enounters an extraordinary little prince. As the prince describes his journey across the planets in search of friendship, the pilot begins to understand value of open-mindedness and the spirit of adventure. This beautifully illustrated paperback is a timeless classic.

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  A Sport & A Pastime by James Salter

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  Salter's 1967 masterpiece of ex-pat literature is both compellingly erotic and exquisitely subtle. Its anonymous American narrator recounts with unsettling fascination the love affair between his friend, Yale dropout Phillip Dean, and a young French shopgirl. As the pair roam the French countryside in Dean's extravagant car, fantasy and reality begin to blur until tragedy seems inevitable. Magnificent.

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  The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

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  A simply wonderful novel, this was winning readers long before its adaptation was winning Oscars. A compelling meditation on the tensions between Germany past and present, with a philosophical core that works in perfect harmony with the eroticism of its moving love story.

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  The Wall Jumper by Peter Schneider

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  In this short but first-rate novel Schneider paints a vivid cast of characters living in 1980s Berlin, accustomed to the presence of the Wall but seeing in it a symbol of the personal frustrations and dissatisfactions they long to overcome.

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  Austerlitz by W G Sebald

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  Jacques Austerlitz is an architectural historian obsessed with rediscovering the history of European civilisation through its prisons, railways and fortresses. Adopted by two elderly Welsh Calvinists, he has also spent his life running from his own past until a break down forces him to explore the secret he has tried to bury. An elegant, exquisite masterpiece and an absolute favourite at Daunt.

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  Dark Room by Rachel Seiffert

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  Following the lives of three characters (a photographer in 1930s Berlin, 12-year-old Lore in 1945 and a young teacher in the '90s) this novel evokes the legacy of the Nazis on ordinary Germans. Beautifully written, this is a powerful, poignant novel