To answer Terril's inquiry I put together a list of French
authors of importance for HB/Noir lit in France. Some are
unquestionable, either for historical reasons or by the
confirmed high quality of their production. Others are very
interesting, by their works that are above the average
production or because they really influenced an important
number of authors. All in the list are post-WW2 authors.
Subdivisions of the list (cap sizes) follow rather closely
the timeline of the evolution of the French HB/Noir lit. (The
"borderline" class is not part of the timeline as such)
Some French expressions:
"Polar": French colloquial for "policier" which was already a
shortening of
"roman policier" (literally: police novel - equivalent to
mystery novel) and of "film policier". The word covered the
whole spectrum of "mysteries".
Polar noir: specific to the HB/noir novel
"N鯭Polar": term coined to name novels of HB/noir inspiration
that appeared during the 70's, and were characterized by
violence, sex, open social criticism, some political
activism, nihilist tendencies, derision, trivialization of
crime, exacerbated real problems of the daily life, some
literary research for form and style, quick writing...
a.s.o.- of course all were not found in each and every novel.
Had the valuable merit to rejuvenate the genre, with some
influence on the next generation of writers, even if we can
count a lot of "misses" in the production of these days (70's
and early 80's).
DIRECT ROOTS OF FRENCH HB/NOIR: THE FOUNDERS
L鯠Malet - Jean Amila - Albert Simonin
ESTABLISHING THE FRENCH MAINSTREAM
Jos頇iovanni - Auguste Lebreton - Pierre Lesou
- Fr餩ric Dard
MODERNIZATION OF THE GENRE: (ESSENTIAL)
Jean-Patrick Manchette - ADG
"NEO-POLAR" AND SOME IMPORTANT INNOVATORS Jean Vautrin -
Pierre Siniac - Alex Varou - Frederic H. Fajardie - Francis
Ryck - Delacorta
PRESENT DAYS / MODERN AUTHORS OF INTEREST Daniel Pennac -
Marc Villard Tito Topin - G鲡rd Delteil Jean-Bernard Pouy -
Didier Daeninckx - Maurice G. Dantec Thierry Jonquet -
Pascale Fonteneau Jean-Claude Izzo
BORDERLINE OF THE GENRE, but typical of some French
orientations- mainly black humor and/or surrealism
San-Antonio (pseudonym of Fr餩ric Dard) - Georges Bardawill-
Fran篩s Barcelo - Nadine Monfils - Alix de Saint-Andr頊
I hope this will give some clues about HB/noir authors in
France. As already underlined, very few works of these
authors were translated in English.
E.Borgers Hard-Boiled Mysteries http://www.geocites.com/Athens/6384
Polar Noir http://www.geocities.com/polarnoir
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