The Penguin Book of French Short Stories: Vol 1 review, edited by Patrick McGuinness – tales with a certain ooh la la

Paris at sunset: ‘There is surprisingly little about food but rather more explicit sex than you would find in a British collection.’ Photograph: Alexander Spatari/Getty Images

This collection opens with a bawdy anecdote and ends with Marcel Proust. The 43 stories spanning 400 years, starting in the 16th century (many newly translated by a variety of hands), include Charles Perrault’s classic version of Bluebeard, Voltaire’s pioneering science fiction, prose poems and dream narratives, supernatural chillers, a Jules Verne duel in a balloon and the first adventure of “gentleman-burglar” Arsène Lupin, subject of a recent hit Netflix series. Gustave Flaubert’s refined character study, A Simple Heart, runs to 31 pages, but the book also finds space for 28 of Félix Fénéon’s “three-line novellas” based on brief items in regional newspapers. (Editor Patrick McGuinness rightly praises the one that reads simply: “Verniot, septuagenarian beggar from Clichy, has died of hunger. 2000 francs were hidden in his mattress. But let’s not generalise.”)

A soldier is captured by Arabs, makes his escape and finds shelter in a cave, which turns out to be inhabited by a panther