Recommendations
Books Like Les Rois en exil
Best books to read after Les Rois en exil by Daudet
Readers who respond to Les Rois en exil's portrait of royal exile, Daudet's combination of social observation and psychological tenderness, and the elegiac treatment of a world that has outlived itself will find the wider tradition of French Naturalist social fiction.
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Fromont et Risler
by Alphonse Daudet
Daudet's 1874 debut novel is the essential foundation for Les Rois en exil: the bourgeois Parisian social world that Les Rois en exil ironizes by introducing the deposed monarchy into it is the world Fromont et Risler established as Daudet's social territory.
- 2Buy
Le Nabab
by Alphonse Daudet
Le Nabab (1877) is the immediate predecessor of Les Rois en exil in Daudet's social series: where Le Nabab is the Second Empire at its height (a Provençal parvenu buying his way into imperial society), Les Rois en exil is the Third Republic receiving the human wreckage of the Empire's fall. Together they form a continuous portrait of French social life from the 1860s to the 1880s.
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Numa Roumestan
by Alphonse Daudet
Numa Roumestan (1881) is the immediate successor to Les Rois en exil and shows Daudet's social series at full extension: where Les Rois en exil is the portrait of monarchist exile, Numa Roumestan is the portrait of republican politics, and reading both shows the full panorama of Third Republic France that Daudet assembled.
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Fathers and Sons
by Ivan Turgenev
Turgenev's 1862 novel about a generation that has outlived its moment is the most important Russian parallel to Les Rois en exil: the Kirsanov family's inability to adapt to the new world of nihilism parallels the Illyrian royal family's inability to adapt to the new world of the Third Republic, and both novels treat the pathos of historical obsolescence with equal tenderness.
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Son Excellence Eugène Rougon
by Émile Zola
Zola's 1876 portrait of a Second Empire political career is the most powerful Naturalist companion to Daudet's portraits of political and social power: where Daudet's Rois en exil shows the losers of the political change, Zola's Rougon shows the winners, and reading both novels together gives the fullest picture of the era.
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On the Eve
by Ivan Turgenev
Turgenev's 1860 novel about a young Bulgarian revolutionary and the Russian woman who follows him to his death in the struggle for Bulgarian independence is a direct structural parallel to Les Rois en exil's portrait of a small European monarchy: both novels treat the drama of political nationalism, royal legitimacy, and personal sacrifice in a European small-state context.
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Jack
by Alphonse Daudet
Jack (1876) shows Daudet's range within the same social novel project: where Les Rois en exil treats the pathos of political exile with a certain aristocratic grandeur, Jack treats the pathos of social exclusion at the petty bourgeois level, and the comparison shows the breadth of Daudet's social sympathy.
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The Charterhouse of Parma
by Stendhal
Stendhal's 1839 novel about an Italian principality in the Napoleonic era and its aftermath is the great predecessor of the European small-state novel that Les Rois en exil belongs to: Fabrice del Dongo's world of courtly intrigue, political exile, and romantic love in the shadow of larger political forces directly anticipates the world of Daudet's Illyrian court.
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