Antoine Laurain is a French novelist, screenwriter, journalist, and director. He started his career directing short films and writing screenplays. He later took a job at an antiques dealer in Paris, where he found inspiration for his first novel, The Portrait (2017). His novels have been translated into over twenty languages.
Antoine Laurain
Antoine Laurain
The Red Notebook
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Antoine Laurain
On A Very Simple Story
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On Antoine Laurain
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On Writing The Red Notebook
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On the Translating Process
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Antoine Laurain
The Red Notebook
Featured book by Antoine Laurain
The Red Notebook
One morning, on his way to work, bookseller Laurent Letellier notices an abandoned handbag on top of a bin. Compelled to return the bag to its rightful owner, he attempts to go to the police, but with no success. Upon opening the bag, in the hope of finding a phone number or address, he find himself enthralled by the handwritten thoughts scribbled on a red notebook, which point to a woman he would like to meet. But how to find someone in a city of millions?
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The Short Stories Of Guy De Maupassant
By Guy De Maupassant
Recommended by: Antoine Laurain
Publish Date: 1880-1891
A master of the short story, Maupassant wrote stories that are increadibly varied in theme and styles alike. His portraits of humanity are characterised by a focus on unflinchingly realistic descriptions of material desire as a driving force in the…
Swann In Love
By Marcel Proust
Recommended by: Antoine Laurain
Publish Date: 1913
A narrative section of Swann’s Way, the first volume in Proust’s monumental novel In Search of Lost Time, Swann in Love is essentially self-contained and has for this reason often been published independently as a novella. In it, the narrator…
Missing Person
By Patrick Modiano
Recommended by: Antoine Laurain
Publish Date: 1978 Awards: 1978 Prix Goncourt
Paris, 1965. Guy Roland, a private detective who lost his memory ten years before, sets off to uncover the truth about his past. As he seeks to find out who he is, he gathers clues which will lead him to…
Wind, Sand And Stars
By Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Recommended by: Antoine Laurain
Publish Date: 1939 Awards: 1939 Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française; 1939 National Book Award for Nonfiction
Drawing from his own experience as a pilot, this memoir recounts de Saint-Exupery’s adventures flying the first mail routes across the Sahara and the Andes for the pioneering airline Latecoere, including his crash in the Libyan desert in 1936.
Comic Books
By Jean-Jacques Sempé
Recommended by: Antoine Laurain
Sempé’s cartoons blend humour and poetry in whimsical portraits of countrysides and cityscapes, often seen from a high viewpoint, in which tiny figures move around in their neat moustaches and berets. Quintessentially French, his illustrations are timeless and exquisite.
Peanuts
By Charles M. Schulz
Recommended by: Antoine Laurain
Publish Date: 1950-2000
The Peanuts comic strip, originally titled Li’l Folks, first appeared in 1950, in seven newspapers across the United States. The strips feature a group of precocious small children and Snoopy the beagle, who interact with each other exchanging lines characterised…
Wuthering Heights
By Emily Brontë
Recommended by: Antoine Laurain & Victoria Hislop
Publish Date: 1847
A tale of passion, torment, and revenge, Wuthering Heights is set in the Yorkshire Moors, where a supernatural occurrence will prompt Heathcliff to tell the tragic story of his love for Catherine, her marriage to the well-meaning Edgar, and his…
Therapy
By David Lodge
Recommended by: Antoine Laurain
Publish Date: 1995
Laurence ‘Tubby’ Passmore, a successful sitcom writer, wealthy, married, with a platonic mistress, is suddenly struck by a mid-life crisis, and no amount of cognitive therapy, physiotherapy, aromatherapy, and acupuncture seem to alleviate his angst nor his inexplicable knee pain.…
The Uncommon Reader
By Alan Bennett
Recommended by: Antoine Laurain
Publish Date: 2007
When the Queen fortuitously finds out about the Westminster travelling library’s weekly visits to the palace, she begins withdrawing books, one after another, and her public duties begin to be affected as a result. Her entourage will be forced to…