The Elementary Particles
by Michel Houellebecq | 
Nohow On
by Samuel Beckett | 
The Notebook
by Agota Kristof | 
So Long a Letter
by Mariama Ba | 
The Flight of Icarus
by Raymond Queneau | 
Joy of Man's Desiring
by Jean Giono | 
The Heart
by Maylis de Kerangal | 
The Great Fire of London
by Jacques Roubaud | 
Once Upon the River Love
by Andrei Makine | 
The Waitress Was New
by Dominique Fabre | 
Honeymoon
by Patrick Modiano | 
Farewell Waltz
by Milan Kundera | 
Harvest
by Jean Giono | 
W
by Georges Perec | 
The Song of the World
by Jean Giono | 
W, or the Memory of Childhood
by Georges Perec | 
The Rover
by Joseph Conrad | 
The Last Life
by Claire Messud | 
School Days
by Patrick Chamoiseau | 
Lucien Leuwen
by Stendhal |
In the mid 1930s, two young American scholars voyage to the Albanian highlands, the last remaining natural habitat of the oral epic, with one of the world's first tape recorders in hand. Their mission? To discover how Homer could have composed works such as The Iliad and The Odyssey without ever writing them down. Their research puts them at the center of ethnic strife in the Balkans and, mistaken for foreign spies, they are placed under surveillance. Research and intrigue proceed apace, until a Serbian monk plots a violent end to their project.