Another November

""Another November" is about not so much the banality as the humble passivity of evil.

The surface of this book that takes place during the German Occupation of France is limpid, insouciant; but the depths are troubled and troubling." - Edmund White. "For all that is said about the novels of youth, conceived and written in hot youth, it is the irresistible heat of memories which creates a life. "Another November" is like a spell, full of underplayed memories, a short, sweet sermon on wartime love, loss, and uncertainty that will recall any modern reader to the business in hand: the business of getting on terms with everything we did, and everything our yearning, imperfect selves never quite pulled off." - Julian Evans.

French writer Roger Grenier's stunning novel tells of a group of friends in the southwest of France whose lives are forever changed by the German Occupation.

The moral failings of one of them, Charles Merlin, which at first seem trivial and personal, assume more sinister dimensions when he collaborates with the Nazis. The narrator of the novel, a member of the resistance, watches Charles's decline and gains a poignant education in his own failings as he tries to rescue the women in Charles's life.

Roger Grenier, the author of thirty books of fiction and criticism, is known for his spare language and melancholy wit.

For decades he has been a key figure in French letters.

Alice Kaplan is a professor of Romance studies and literature at Duke University and the author, most recently, of "French Lessons: A Memoir".