Some suspense to get you reading until the end!Īnanda Devi is also a great francophone writer of nouvelles. They all have in common that the ending is unexpected. Download a PDF of nouvelles in French created by Versailles University, a compilation of contemporary short stories.Most of them don’t look much different to infinitive or other tenses you already know so you’ll understand it quickly once you become exposed to it. We never use passé simple to speak so you just need to be able to recognize the verb to be able to read it. You can find a few stories here to see if the style appeals to you. They were written in the 19th century so you have to keep in mind that people lived a much simpler life at the time (no cars, no cell phones, very little international travel) but they’re very accessible once you get used to the passé simple conjugation. I believe the most famous French writer of “nouvelles” is Guy de Maupassant.and some French teachers also publish their own to help French learners ( Nathalie FLE).You can find a lot of amateur nouvelles on this website.It’s a litterary genre in itself and although it’s not the most popular in France, you can find “recueil de nouvelles”. Check out the summer reading lists for students entering grades PK-12 for the 2021-2022 school year. In French, when we use the word “nouvelles”, we usually don’t speak about the news ( l’actualité), rather about short stories.

Nouvelles (short-stories): for the satisfaction to reach the end of the story in a relatively short time

Intermediate reading