Christmas is a time to reflect upon the year that is ending. 2005 has been a good year for books and not just for best-sellers but for literary production as well.
 Literary awards this year reflect particularly well the high quality of fiction which is around and have been given to books which might otherwise have been brushed aside as too 'highbrow' or too 'difficult'. Vollman's Europe Central (National Book Award for Fiction), or Banville's The Sea (Man Booker Prize) are cases in point. Although Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking belongs to the category of what I would consider an essay with philosophical overtones, with The National Book Award for Non-Fiction, it will reach many readers, becoming most probably a 'popular' gift and one to match the spirit of the Christmas tradition.
 The French Literary Prizes awarded in November have been given to quite a few Anglophone books: The Femina Prize for Foreign Fiction has been awarded to Joyce Carol Oates for The Falls. It is the first time this prolific and popular American writer gains significant recognition in France and her back list has been since in high demand.
The Irish author Colm Toibin was awarded Le Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger for The Master , a favourite one in our bookshop, one which has been prominently displayed on our best-sellers table for two steady years. The life of books is generally held to be a few weeks at most, but in independent bookshops, books we like can shamelessly 'enjoy' an exceptionally long life.
 Le Prix Mille Pages, is a prize given by the booksellers of an independent bookstore named Mille Pages in the affluent (yes, such exists) suburb of Vincennes east of Paris. A team of booksellers, influenced by their own and their customers' taste select each Fall a winner in each category: fiction, non-fiction, foreign literature, foreign essays, children… This year this prestigious and highly respected prize for foreign literature went to the Indian author Tarun Tejpal for his novel The Alchemy of Desire (in French: Loin de Chandigarh). A novel not yet published in the United States and which we have been promoting with conviction since its publication in Great Britain a year ago. This is a novel about India, present and past, about its history, a book about passion, and the act of writing. It is also a road novel with descriptions of dusty plains sprawling under scorching sun and, in sharp contrast, of a Himalayan landscape, misty, lush, green and eerie.
Read more Village Voice Bookshop recommendations of New Hardcover and New Paperback titles under the books tab in the top and bottom navigation links.
Festival Americas in Vincennes
The owner of the Mille Pages Bookstore (which includes three bookstores) and the originator of The Mille Pages Prize is a brilliant man by the name of Francis Geffard who happens to be also the founder of the Festival Americas in Vincennes. A Festival in which every two years participate close to 100 writers from all over North America: US, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean.
As I was attending the award-winning ceremony in Vincennes last week, I thought of the predicament which Anglophone independent bookshops, not just in Paris but all over the world, find themselves in: the fierce competition with the Internet 'book-selling' global network while French bookstores continue to be protected by the Maginot line of the Loi Lang, a law introduced by The Minister of Culture, Jack Lang, under the presidency of François Mitterand. This Loi du Prix Unique stipulates that books published and sold in France, whether in independent bookstores or in chains, cannot be discounted by more than 5 percent from the official or marked price. This explains why foreigners always marvel at the number of small or medium-size bookshops to be found in every city in France.
Authors: Past and Future
 In 2005, our Readers Series has again brought to the Paris Anglophone community some of the greatest Anglophone writers from all over the world. To name a few… from America: Jorie Graham, Amy Tan, Monique Truong and Greil Marcus; from Canada, Jane Urquhart; from England, Jim Crace and Hanif Kureishi; from Ireland, Colm Toibin; from India, Tarun Tejpal; from South Africa, Damon Galgut; from Australia, Shirley Hazzard; and the Iranian authors Azar Nafisi and Marjane Satrapi who live respectively in the United States and France. The unquestionable superiority of today's Anglophone literature is that it is a world literature with the greatest range and variety of cultural expressions.
 The year 2006 promises to be well. In January, Hazel Rowley will discuss her hair-raising biography of one of the most famous couples of the 20th century, Simone de Beauvoir and Sartre, followed later in the month by a presentation by Alice Notley of Ted Berrigan's Collected Poems, and by Carolyn Burke's discussion of her biography of Lee Miller. In February, David Sedaris will once more hold his audience spellbound with his incomparable wit and Richard Powers will for the first time read his work to a Parisian audience. For an update of all our events, please check our events page.
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