summer reading

Aerial view of Jacques Coeur's palace by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, in his Dictionnaire Raisonné de L'Architecture Française du XIe au XVIe siècle (1854–1868)

As high summer wears itself out, the outdoor world is becoming more accessible. However, as of yet I've not been able to take full advantage of it, I'm still pretty much-desk focussed – reading, writing, and looking at paintings on the wall, about which I'll be writing an upcoming blogpost.
As for reading, I've been working my way through the oeuvre of the French academician, Jean-Christophe Ruffin. He writes both long, well-researched novels in a historical vein, and also novels that take contemporary geopolitical realities for their subject-matter. He also writes what Graham Greene would have called 'entertainments', a series of short novels on the (mis)adventures of a foreign-born, French, middle-aged, junior diplomat: Les énigmes d'Aurel le Consul. I owe the author a debt of gratitude. Aurel kept me going when I was recently confined to a hospital bed in Marseille for a fortnight.
I've also enjoyed reading Ruffin's more "serious" novels, especially Rouge Brésil, (Brazil Red) which recounts France's attempt to wheedle its way into a continent that the papacy had already divided between Spain and Portugal. It's the story of a doomed sixteenth-century colony on the coast of Brazil that would later be known as Rio de Janeiro. It was a good read, and as with all of Ruffin's books there are his political reflection to appreciate and geo-historical facts to be mulled over. 
I've just finished his book Le grand Coeur  based on the true story of Jacques Coeur, a fifteenth-century merchant, and treasurer and courtier of Charles VII of France. Ruffin grew up in the shadow of a palatial castle in the central French city of Bourges of which they were both natives. The palace, a folly, was Jacques Coeur's construction, and reveals the influence of voyages to "the Orient" and the great Italian trading cities. 
As Ruffin tells us in his postface, he feels enormously grateful to Jacques Coeur for having fuelled a childhood imaginary that helped him survive the years spent in the provincial town. That debt compelled the author to consecrate a book to his memory. The book is much more of a monument than it is straightforward ,biographical a novel. It is, as always with Ruffin, exquisitely written in a French that is both stylish and accessible. However, what emerges most strongly from the novel is the sense of confinement that all the court actors were bound by, as if France, and even the lands beyond it, were a prison from which it was impossible to escape. Coeur's fate is presaged from the outset, so the long, sometimes seemingly circular, story is really more about Jacques Coeur's search for inner liberation as he progresses towards his physical end. My sentiment is that Ruffin was too close to the hero of the story and thus, and this is a disagreeable thing to say, he doesn't see his own self-indulgence in penning what is an extremely long and winding narrative. However, if you are passionate about the fifteenth century, don't be put off, you'll find the book rewarding in many ways.
Another recent, and much shorter, piece of reading concerns the reality of teaching and writing about China in Europe; a subject close to my heart. Christelle Nguyen 
has written a very interesting and well-informed article about speaking truth to Chinese state power in Europe: "The Limits of Talking About China in Europe" (August 20, 2026). In classrooms and courtrooms, and on campuses across Europe, scholars are engaged in a quiet struggle to speak freely about a country whose impact can be felt everywhere. It's odd, but also somehow gratifying, to read in print the names of former students who are now among those standing up to bullying by the Chinese state.

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