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 “King Solomon begged the Almighty to grant him ‘an intelligent heart’.
Having come to the end of a century ravaged by the combined effects of technological efficiency and ideological fervour, that wish is still just as potent.
And yet God says nothing. Perhaps He is watching us, but He gives us no answer, keeps His own counsel, doesn’t intervene in our affairs. He leaves us to our own devices. It isn’t to Him or to history, which has been discredited by a century of horrors committed in his name, that we should address our request with any hope of success, but to literature. Without that, the grace of an intelligent heart would remain elusive forever. And we might learn the laws of life, but not its jurisprudence.”
This is Alain Finkielkraut’s premise. In his investigation of the relationships between man and the world around him he has chosen nine books: Milan Kundera’s The Joke, Vassili Grossman’s Tout Passe, Sebastian Haffner’s Geschichte Eines Deutschen, Albert Camus’s The First Man, Philip Roth’s The Human Stain, Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim, Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground, Henry James’s Washington Square and Karen Blixen’s Babette’s Feast.
In his first great personal undertaking since L’Imparfait du présent (Gallimard, 2002), Alain Finkielkraut tells us once again how essential literature is in deciphering the world’s enigmas. How it is still the best defence against received ideas and certainties. How writers and their works alter our existence, mould our lives, rearrange our perception of people and values, the present and the future.

Alain Finkielkraut lectures at the prestigious Polytechnique school of engineering. He presents the show “Répliques” for France Culture. His last book was Nous autres modernes (2005). He has overseen the publication of three books for Stock: Ce que peut la littérature, Qu’est-ce que la France? and La querelle de l’école.