Recommendations
Books Like La Route des Flandres by Claude Simon
Novels in which memory cannot recover what disaster destroyed
La Route des Flandres is the fullest literary investigation of what the May 1940 defeat did to French consciousness — in sentences that refuse to end, that hold past and present simultaneously. These novels share that same project of narrating the unnarratable disaster.
- 1
Buy on AmazonL'Acacia
by Claude Simon
Simon's late autobiographical novel — the same WWI and WWII family history approached with a different formal technique; the essential companion to La Route des Flandres
- 2
Buy on AmazonLes Géorgiques
by Claude Simon
Simon's late monumental novel — three time periods (Napoleonic, Spanish Civil War, WWII) in sustained Faulknerian sentences; his other claim for the Nobel
- 3
Buy on AmazonThe Sound and the Fury
by William Faulkner
The direct model for Simon's formal technique — multiple temporal planes, sustained sentences, non-linear consciousness; read before or alongside La Route des Flandres
- 4
Buy on AmazonAbsalom, Absalom!
by William Faulkner
Faulkner's most formally ambitious novel — the reconstruction of a Southern family history from fragments; the other Faulkner novel most relevant to Simon's technique
- 5
Buy on AmazonLes Gommes
by Alain Robbe-Grillet
The founding novel of the same nouveau roman movement — the formal opposite (surface precision vs. sustained sentences) but the same rejection of conventional novelistic values
- 6
Buy on AmazonLa Modification
by Michel Butor
The most accessible nouveau roman novel — a good introduction to the movement before attempting La Route des Flandres; the same formal territory, entered more gently
- 7
Buy on AmazonThe Tin Drum
by Günter Grass
Grass's German novel of the same WWII period — Oskar Matzerath's account of the Danzig Corridor; the German formal equivalent to Simon's investigation of defeat
- 8
Buy on AmazonWeek-end à Zuydcoote
by Robert Merle
Merle's Prix Goncourt novel of the Dunkirk evacuation — the realist French counterpart to Simon's formal account of the same May 1940 disaster; the comparison shows what the nouveau roman adds
More La Route des Flandres by Claude Simon Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.