En Route: A Journey Round France in the Company of Great Writers

From the coast of Normandy to the Côte d’Azur, along the banks of the Seine to the Alps – the ultimate literary tour of France.

‘Peter Fiennes’s brisk literary travelogue is witty and packed with gossip; it moves at the speed of a TGV, with the elegance of a Citroën DS.’ Sebastian Faulks

Travelling in a loop around France, from Le Havre to Paris, Peter Fiennes explores France’s sense of its own people, place and identity through some of its greatest writers and artists. Moving between the centuries, from the Arthurian forests and Neolithic fields of Brittany to the banlieues of Paris, Fiennes follows the threads of history across France. And wonders what is next for this sublime, mysterious and sometimes fractious country.

Fiennes drinks with Sartre and de Beauvoir in the bars of Rouen and Le Havre; follows Edith Wharton’s ‘Motor-Flight’ along the Loire Valley to the home of George Sand; and explores the beaches of the south with Colette and Katherine Mansfield. He lingers near Bordeaux with François Mauriac, strolls in the foothills of the Alps with John Berger and follows Colette to the trenches at Verdun, before finally heading to Paris, where he consigns Maupassant to an asylum and Sartre to his grave.

A paean to the glories of French literature, art, landscape, food and wine, En Routeis a heartfelt exploration of where the country finds itself after so many centuries at the centre of European life.

***

‘En Route is a tour de force.’ Christopher de Bellaigue, author of The Lion House

‘What bliss to travel France in the company of such great writers – including Peter Fiennes, the wittiest companion anyone could hope for.’ Alex von Tunzelmann, author of Fallen Idols

‘Fascinating, funny and elegiac.’ Sofka Zinovieff, author of Eurydice Street