Provence Literary Books

Click on the picture of the book to see reviews, price and to buy. If you live in the USA, this is the right page for you, if you are in the UK/Ireland please click here. Provence high-brow selection

Provence Ford Madox Ford spent his last years near Toulon. In "Provence" (1935), he explores both the place and the idea of it: 'not a country nor the home of a race, but a frame of mind'.

Caesar's Vast Ghost The author Lawrence Durrell lived in Provence for 30 years, his last book is a homage to the land he loved: part travelogue, part writer's notebook, part autobiography.

Luminous Debris An exploration of the landscapes of Provence and the Languedoc, focusing on a particular place or artifact and musing on the meaning of things. Not for the faint-hearted.

The Fly-Truffler Most unusual story of a truffle-loving linguist's romance with the spirit of his dead wife. Lyrical, poetic, and evocative of the Luberon landscapes it is set in. The author lived here for many years.

Seeking Provence Unearthing a Provence beyond the idea of a holiday home for the summer, this book explores the cultural idiosyncrasies and deeply anchored heritage of this Mediterranean land. It reflects on a way of life that is still worth living today.

Old Provence First published in 1905, Old Provence provides a remarkable insight not only into the area's history and architecture, but also its literary and cultural significance, from the ancients to the turbulent middle ages.

Provence: A Cultural History Through its architecture, literature, and popular culture, this book analyzes and celebrates the identity of a region famous for its pastis and pétanque.

Two Towns in Provence Two Towns in Provence brings together M.F.K. Fisher's unforgettable portraits of Aix-en-Provence and Marseille, which she describes as "my picture, my map, of a place and therefore of myself."

  Books by people who moved to Provence (and are not Peter Mayle) 

Perfume from Provence Charming account of an English couple's life in a Provence village, filled with sights and scents, builders, village fetes, quirky locals - like Peter Mayle but from the 1930s.

Village in the Vaucluse In the 1950s the author lived for a year in the then-isolated village of Roussillon in the Luberon. It's a sociological study of life in provincial France but full of interesting anecdotes.

A Farmhouse in Provence What happens when a Vogue travel editor marries a Frenchman and buys a ruined farmhouse and vineyard near Avignon? Pretty much this...

Luberon Garden A British landscape gardener recounts anecdotes of life in the Luberon through the prism of garden projects and clients, as well as the landscaping of his own garden near Lacoste.

Provence je t'aime The adventures of an American couple who buy a house in Provence and exchange their hectic, urban existence for a tranquil, rural lifestyle, focusing on the food, the wine and the ambiance of life among the vineyards.

Ten Years in Provence The twist here is that this couple moved to a city rather than the countryside, this is an account of more than a decade in Aix-en-Provence, living as the locals do.

Love in Provence What happens when you chaperone 50 red-blooded American college students for a year to a study abroad program in Aix-en-Provence, and fall in love yourself.

 

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Rather than pack a ton of books for your trip to Europe, you could get a Kindle , an electronic book reader that can download and store up to 3,500 books, as well as your usual newspapers or magazines. There are over 850,000 titles to choose from on Amazon. I was very impressed by the screen on the new Kindle, it is as easy to read as a book. The Kindle comes in two flavors, one with 3G and one without:

 

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