En Route

From the Côte d’Azur to the cliffs of Normandy, along the banks of the Seine to the Alps, this is the ultimate literary tour of France.

In this sparkling new narrative—traveling 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 Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone 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 in Bordeaux with François Mauriac, canvasses the foothills of the Alps with John Berger and follows Colette to the trenches at Verdun, before finally heading to Paris, where he consigns Guy de Maupassant to an asylum and Sartre to his grave.

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