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Description
Camara Laye's L'Enfant
noir is a classic autobiographical fiction of the French African experience
in the modern world.
Features
The Focus Student Editions are
appropriate as introductory texts for French language courses in literature and
culture. These editions, prepared with non-native French speakers in mind,
include an introduction (in French) to the author and the work, the complete
novel with both linguistic and cultural notes (French-French), a current
bibliography and questions in the AP* format to facilitate study.
Market
The
Focus Student Editions are appropriate as introductory texts for French
language courses in literature and culture.
Focus Student Edition Series:
Guy
de Maupassant: Pierre et Jean Moliere:
L'Ecole des femmes
Voltaire:
Candide ou l'Optimisme Corneille:
Le Cid
About the Authors
Natalie Schorr teaches at
Phillips
Academy,
Andover,
where she has served as chair of the language division. She received a
diplôme d’études supérieures, mention bien, from L’Université d’Aix-Marseille
and served as lectrice at L’Ecole Normale Supérieure de Fontenay-aux-Roses. Her most recent book is Tune Up Your
French: The Top Ten Ways to Improve Your Spoken French.
Myrna Bell
Rochester (A.B. Romance Languages,
University of
Chicago; M.A., Ph.D. French, U.C.L.A.)
also studied at the Université de Genève. Her book on Surrealist poet and
novelist René Crevel was published in Stanford French and Italian Studies (René Crevel: Le Pays des miroirs absolus). Dr. Rochester taught at
U.C.L.A.,
Menlo
College, and Stanford. She is a
free-lance book editor and the author of college texts: Rendez-vous, Entrée
en scène, Bonjour, ça va? and Vis-à-vis, as well as a trade text, Easy
French Step-by-Step).
Dr. Rochester is the co-editor of the
French literary classics series for Focus Publishing: Camara Laye's L'Enfant noir, Molière's L'École des femmes, Maupassant's
Pierre et Jean, Voltaire's Candide, and Corneille's Le Cid. Her criticism includes studies
of Simone de Beauvoir, Béatrix Beck, Dominique Desanti, and other women writers of the World War II era. She
contributed English translations to Surrealist
Women: An International Anthology
(ed. Penelope Rosemont) and to the award-winning Black, Brown and Beige: Surrealist Writings from
Africa
and the Diaspora (eds. Franklin Rosemont and Robin D. G. Kelley). Dr.
Rochester contributes to the UK-based online Literary Encyclopedia.
Reviews
Women in
French Studies, Vol. 14 (2006), pp. 153-155
From NECTFL Review #62 (Spring/Summer)
These
editions are meant to provide students with a smooth transition from the study
of language to the study of literature. As a matter of fact, they oftentimes
provide a bridge that leads imperceptibly from one to the other (this is
particularly true in the case of L’enfant noir, the story of a boy’s
youth told with meticulous contextualization, considerable repetition, and
constant rephrasing — characteristic techniques of the oral storytelling
tradition).... [T]he Focus Student Edition of L’enfant noir is currently
the best available. It has great merit. AP and non-AP teachers of Francophone
literature should not hesitate to adopt it.
~ J. Vincent H. Morrissette,
Fairfield
University