The Novella à la Française, 10 Weeks, GAYLEY
F 2025

Description

Shorter than a novel yet longer and more complex than a short story, the novella is a marvelous literary genre for our fast-paced modern age when the time to sit and ponder a novelist’s detailed descriptions may be all too fleeting. Thanks to its concision, the novella can be enjoyed with pleasure  in one or two sittings. If you are an aficionado of French literature, you may well delight in this SDG that offers a sampling of its novellas in translation spanning the 18th through the 21st centuries. Participants will read: Candide (Voltaire) Le Colonel Chabert (Balzac), Boule de Suif (Maupassant), Pierre and Jean (Maupassant), The Silence of the Sea (Vercors) The Stranger (Camus), and The Meursault Investigation (Daoud). Please come and join us at GAYLEY for this 10 week tour de force.


Weekly Topics

Week 1-Candide 

Week 2  Le Colonel Chabert

Week 3  View and discuss the film Le Colonel Chabert 

Week 4 Boule de Suif 

Weeks 5, 6 Pierre and Jean 

Week 7  The Silence of the Sea

Weeks 8 The Stranger 

Weeks 9-10 The Meursault Investigation 


Bibliography

Candide by Voltaire

Warbler Classics Annotated Edition 

(available on Project gutenberg.org)

Le Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac.

(available on Project gutenberg.org)

Pierre and Jean by Guy de Maupassant

 (Penguin Classics) 

The Silence of the Sea by Vercors

Bloomsbury Academic

The Stranger by Albert Camus

(Vintage international)

 The Meursault Investigation by Kamel Daoud

(Other Press)