Books like Vernon Subutex 3 by Virginie Despentes

Phileas Fogg wagers he can circumnavigate the globe in 80 days, a daring quest that unfolds into a globe‑spanning adventure.

Candide: A Tale of Conviviality and Optimism in a Wretched World

In 19th‑century rural France, country doctor Charles Bovary marries the ambitious Emma, whose longing for romance and luxury drives her into affairs and reckless spending, spiraling her into ruin and social disgrace.

A woman discovers her brother, who abandoned her baby son, has left him in the woods and claims natural death. She embarks alone on a quest to find the child, facing harsh landscapes and unsettling strangers along the way.

A 19th‑century French novel by Stendhal that situates a young Italian aristocrat amid the social, political, and romantic upheavals of Napoleonic Europe.

Kamel Daoud’s novel, a response to Camus’s *The Stranger*, follows Harun, a forgotten brother of the fictional Arab, who names his late sibling Musa and narrates the circumstances of his death on a sun‑lit beach, weaving personal grief into a critique of Algeria’s post‑colonial reality.

A vivid, atmospheric snapshot of a Parisian day in a 33‑degree heat, capturing the silence of rue Bourdon, the canal Saint‑Martin, and fleeting encounters with two men, one from the Bastille and another from the Jardin des Plantes.

Les contes drôlatiques is a collection of medieval‑themed short stories by Honoré de Balzac, written in archaic French and illustrated by Gustav Dore in early editions published by Garnier Frères.

In this suspenseful thriller, Josephine, newly hired at a high‑tech firm, uncovers a web of conspiracy that threatens her family and forces her to confront powerful, dangerous forces.

Vernon Subutex, ancien disquaire à la dérive, ne peut guère compter que sur Alex Bleach pour l'aider à payer ses factures. Quand celui-ci meurt d'overdose, Vernon est expulsé de son appartement parisien et doit se faire héberger à droite et à gauche, sans se douter que tout le monde le recherche afin de mettre la main sur la vidéo que lui a laissée la pop star avant de mourir. Prix Anaïs Nin 2015. As if she were a manic, female counterpart to Michel Houellebecq, Virginie Despentes's novels overflow with violence, second-wave feminism, and restlessness to the point of mania. As she declared in her memoir-cum-manifesto, King Kong Theory, "being Virginie Despentes is a more interesting business than anything else going on out there." Her first novel, Baise-moi, was turned into a film full of murderous women and rape; her last novel, Apocalypse bébé (see WLT, Mar. 2011, 60), was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt and won the Prix Renaudot; and now she is in the middle of a trilogy.