French Corner: A Select Bibliography  

It has been said that the rich literary tradition of France provides the key to understanding its people, history, society, culture, politics and ideology. In fact, the nation’s identity is documented in the French literary heritage.

A total of 15 French writers, poets and essayists have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature since 1901, more than any other country in the world. These include authors such as André Gide (1947), Albert Camus (1957), Jean-Paul Sartre (awarded in 1964 but declined the honour) and most recently, Gao Xingjian (2000), a China-born turned French citizen novelist, who wrote in Chinese.

The French Corner was established with a generous grant from the government of France to foster cultural and literary collaborations with Singapore. The idea was to give Singaporeans better insights into French thinking, culture and literature.

The collection consists of 1,000 books that cover classical French literary works, French philosophy and a representative collection from the Social Sciences and Humanities subjects. The collection comprises French books translated into Singapore’s four official languages – English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil, with the bulk of the collection in the English language.

The selected titles are to reflect the wealth, quality and diversity of French philosophical thought and literature and comprise of authoritative French works.  With the launch of the “French Corner”, NLB hopes to provide greater public access to and awareness of these literary materials for Singaporeans to appreciate the history and culture of France and its people.

This bibliography listing is also accessible digitally via the National Library Board website (http://www.nlb.gov.sg/) and the French Embassy website in Singapore (http://www.ambafrance-sg.org/).