Recommendations
Books Like L'Âge d'homme by Michel Leiris
Autobiographies that refuse to flatter the author
Leiris applies the bullfight to autobiography: genuine risk, genuine exposure, no self-censorship. These works share that same refusal — they will not select the flattering and suppress the shameful, they will tell you what the conventional autobiography leaves out.
- 1Buy on Amazon
La Règle du jeu
by Michel Leiris
The four-volume continuation of the same project — Biffures, Fourbis, Fibrilles, Frêle bruit; the definitive Leiris; richer and stranger than L'Âge d'homme and its essential sequel
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Buy on AmazonLes Mots
by Jean-Paul Sartre
The Words — Sartre's autobiography of his childhood and literary vocation; the most rigorous French self-examination of the same period; compared to Leiris, Sartre's autobiography is more theatrical but equally honest
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Buy on AmazonW ou le souvenir d'enfance
by Georges Perec
Perec's childhood autobiography alongside the fantasy island of W — the most formally interesting French autofiction after Leiris; the memory of loss in the double narrative structure
- 4Buy on Amazon
Une vie de garçon
by Annie Ernaux
Ernaux's diary of a year of sexual freedom — the French feminist equivalent of Leiris's exposure; the same refusal to flatter, applied to a female experience in a completely different social register
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Buy on AmazonLes Années
by Annie Ernaux
The Years — Ernaux's collective autobiography; a life told through collective memories rather than personal ones; the most ambitious French autofiction since La Règle du jeu
- 6Buy on Amazon
Afrique fantôme
by Michel Leiris
Leiris's ethnographic journal — the same refusal of self-flattery applied to the colonial enterprise; the ethnographer observing himself observing Africa; the ethnographic companion to the autobiographical project
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Buy on AmazonThe Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
by Gertrude Stein
Stein's autobiography told as if by someone else — the most sophisticated formal solution to the problem of autobiography that Leiris is also trying to solve; the formal complement to his bullfight solution
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Buy on AmazonL'Écume des jours
by Boris Vian
The postwar French playful novel — very different from Leiris's grave autobiography but from the same Saint-Germain-des-Prés postwar world; the comparison shows the range of the period
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