"France in the New Century" by John Ardagh (Penguin)
Things are suddenly looking shiny in dusty old France. La morosité, that hangdog depression that seized the nation for most of the ’90s, has been replaced by a newfound confidence. The economy’s booming, unemployment's down, and the belated discovery of the Internet has launched a California-style entrepreneurial wave. Forget Sartre: if you want to be cool in France today, go work in un start-up.
How deep do these trends go? Are they just passing fads, like the current love for roller-blading, or is the country really being transformed? How will the French reconcile a 35-hour week with capitalism red in tooth & claw? And what about Europe, decentralization, la banlieue?
Some thoughtful answers to these far-reaching questions can be found in “France in the New Century,” the latest in a series of books on the country by British journalist John Ardagh. A lifelong francophile, Ardagh has been writing on French affairs since 1955. A more cautious commentator than most, he is nonetheless full of praise for Lionel Jospin and the job he is doing modernizing the country.
So will France lose its old-world charm in the process? Not necessarily. “The joie de vivre around the family table or the village fête, has nothing to do with centralization and protectionalism,” says Ardagh. “You can be a country like any other in your structures, embracing globalization, multiculturalism, decentralization, while still having your good old cultural and social traditions. It’s not impossible.”

“The Palace of Tears” by Alev Lytle Crouter (Hutchinson)
One fall afternoon in 1868, Casimir de Châteauneuf enters a junk shop in the Palais Royal and finds himself face to face with an astonishing Oriental portrait of a young woman. He is captivated by her beauty, and especially her eyes, one yellow, the other blue.
That night, with the painting by his bedside, the young wine-grower dreams of a city of domes and minarets. A man possessed, he abandons his wife and seven children, and heads East.
This fast-moving fantasy is a fairy tale for grown-ups. The atmosphere is lush, but the prose is lean and concise. Best of all, it's based on a true story: Crouter’s great, great grandfather was a Frenchman who fell in love with a Turkish woman and converted to Islam. She was born in Istanbul, in a konak, the house that once held the harem where her grandmother lived with her sisters and a hundred other women.

“I Was For Sale” by Lisa B. Falour (Creation)
Born in Ohio and now living in Paris, Falour has been to college and worked on Wall Street. She has also been an S&M bondage model on and off since the late ’70s, when she hit New York as a runaway teenage punk. “I have been involved in a lot of sick, strange things in my life,” she writes, “and am absolutely compelled to tell about them.” She claims to have no idea how to write, but is actually a good storyteller who enjoys the surreal humor of life on the depraved edge. Not for the squeamish, but I found it hard to put down.

“The Death of Jean Moulin” by Patrick Marnham (John Murray)
This extremely intelligent biography is really an atmospheric history of France’s darkest hour, the German occupation, as seen through the portrait of its most famous resistance leader. The Gaullists made Jean Moulin into such a white knight that it is virtually impossible to tell his story objectively — hence the subtitle, “Biography of a Ghost.” There is a lot of politics — too much, in parts — but Marnham is just as good at unraveling Moulin’s complex and secretive personality. The early chapters are especially good, in which he describes the hysterical atmosphere of the late ’30s, with right and left at each other’s throats in a near-civil war that Pétain pursued to the end.
At the heart lies a mystery — who, if anyone, betrayed Moulin to the Gestapo?

“Boulangerie!” by Jack Armstrong & Delores Wilson (Ten Speed Press)
This “Pocket Guide to Paris’ Famous Bakeries” gives the rundown on 220 of the city’s best bread-makers, arrondissement by arrondissement. They were spot on for my part of the 14th, and I learned that my favorite source of baguettes is also famed for its macaroons. The authors don’t live here, but they must have put on a few pounds doing the research: no tarte has gone untasted.

“Van Gogh Face to Face: The Portraits” (Thames & Hudson)
A month before he died in 1890, van Gogh wrote to his sister, “what impassions me most — much, much more than all the rest of my métier — is the portrait, the modern portrait.” Like his fellow introspective Dutchman Rembrandt, van Gogh is famous for his self-portraits. He was also a great painter of other people, as this gorgeous volume shows. It goes from early sketches of Dutch beggars to his great image of Doctor Gachet, the psychiatrist that Vincent tried to capture wearing “the heart-broken expression of our time.”

Edmund White reads from his new novel “The Married Man” (Knopf/Chatto, French edition by Plon). See interview on page 18. Sept 7, 7pm, Village Voice, 6 rue Princesse, 6e, M° Mabillon/St-Germain-des-Prés, tel: 01 46 33 36 47

The American Library in Paris invites 6- to 9-year-old children to redisover Egypt, Sept 16, 2pm, 10 rue du Général Camou, 7e, M° Ecole Militaire, tel: 01 53 59 12 60

The Live Poet’s Society opens its season with readings by Damien Lennon, Jennifer Pinard and Bill Strangmeyer. Sept 17, 4pm, Flann O'Brien Irish Pub, 6 rue Bailleul, 1er, M° Louvre-Rivoli, tel: 01 42 60 13 58, donation 25F

Françoise Bourlet and Nathalie Kleinschmidt launch their new book “Roots and Wings: My Adventure Roadbook,” for parents, and children 7-12 years old. Sept 19, 7:30pm, WH Smith, 248 rue Rivoli, 1er, tel: 01 44 77 88 99

Canadian poet and novelist Michael Ondaatje presents his 1998 collection of poems “Handwriting” (Picador) and his new novel “Anil’s Ghost” (Bloomsbury), both just out in French (Olivier). The latter, his first novel since “The English Patient” and already an international best-seller, is a murder mystery set in war-torn Sri-Lanka. Sept 19, 7pm, Canadian Cultural Center, 5 rue de Constantine, 7e, Mº Invalides, tel: 01 44 43 21 90

A second appearance from Michael Ondaatje, this time with his French translator Michel Lederer. Sept 20, from 6pm, Librairie Le Divan, 203 rue de la Convention 15e, Mº Convention, tel: 01 53 68 90 68

Brentano’s marks the rentrée with a series of book signings. Sept 21, 7:30pm, Thaddeus Carhart with “The Piano Shop on the Left Bank.” Saturday, Sept 23, 2:30-4:30pm, Toi Derricotte and “The Black Notebooks: an Interior Journey.” Sept 28, Polly Platt’s “Savoir Flair.”

This month’s African-American Literary Soirée will feature a surprise acclaimed American writer. Sept 25, 7:30pm. Reservations: Patricia Laplante-Collins, 01 43 26 12 88

The American Library in Paris, Village Voice Bookshop and Le Serpent à Plumes sponsor a reading and book signing by Rikki Ducornet, author of “Phosphor in Dreamland,” followed by a wine reception. Free one-day passes to use the library. Plus books for signing, courtesy of Village Voice. Sept 27, 8pm. American Library, 10 rue du Général Camou, 7e, tel: 01 53 59 12 60

PASS, the Paris Salon Writers’ Support Group meets regularly and welcomes all writers. Free. Info: 01 42 63 24 46