Book description
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
Bonjour cher reader,
Ever since European history began, we Brits have been happily
engaged in our national pastime - annoying the French. And the past
couple of years have shown that this annoying never stops. To give
just three examples:
After a mid-Atlantic collision between French and British nuclear
submarines, France's Minister of Defence seemed to blame the accident
on ... shrimps.
When French political superstar Dominique Strauss-Kahn was arrested
in New York, France's establishment was outraged. It soon emerged that
sexual harassment was regarded as a basic human right by the country's
male élite. (This theme provided so much excellent material that I
decided to include it in the plot of my soon-to-be published novel,
The Merde Factor.)
And when David Cameron walked out of a Eurosummit, a French
politician accused him of being 'like a man at a wife-swapping party
who refuses to bring his own wife.' Yes, a very French image, and it
just one of the many anti-Anglais insults that came flying
across the Channel.
You will find all this, and much more, in Annoying the French
Encore! Because, for the French, the merde never ends.
Yours historically,
Stephen Clarke, Paris, August 2012
'Tremendously entertaining' Sunday Times
'Relentlessly and energetically rude' Mail on Sunday
Stephen Clarke lives in Paris. His first novel, A Year in
the Merde, became a word-of-mouth hit in 2004, and is now
published all over the world. Since then he has published three more
bestselling Merde novels, as well as Talk to the Snail,
an indispensable guide to understanding the French.
Research for Stephen's novels has taken him all over France and
America. For 1000 Years of Annoying the French, he inhaled the
chill air of ruined castles and deserted battlefields, leafed through
dusty chronicles, brushed up the medieval French he studied at
university and generally lost himself in the mists of history. He has
now returned to present-day Paris, and is doing his best to live the
entente cordiale.
