Franck Pavloff, brown, 2001

Two easy-going friends are living under a regime that is gradually tightening its grip. New laws are introduced stating that brown pets are healthier, stronger and eat less than other animals. So as not to upset the authorities they trade in their differently coloured pets for brown ones. Other colours start to disappear, first the cats, then the dogs, then the people...

brown is nothing less than a very succinct short story that first appeared in France as 'Matin Brun', published by a small press more famed for its poetry, and is now available in English with a small commentary about its origin and subsequently very colourful life. It was written by Pavloff (a psychologist and son of a Bulgarian anarchist) as a response to French local elections in 1998 when it was discovered that mainstream political parties had made secret alliances with the extreme right wing Front National. Through word of mouth it has since been used to debate totalitarianism with the FN’s Jean-Marie Le Pen, and has since sold at least 600,000 copies.  PY

MORE ON FRANCK PAVLOFF : FRENCH WIKIPÉDIA

Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt, Mr. Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran, 2001

A teenage Jew, Momo, may be stealing from Monsieur Ibrahim’s Paris shop but over time they form the kind of cross-cultural father-son relationship that both seem to have been seeking out. Ibrahim’s Sufi beliefs come across as a light-hearted and positive way of dealing with the world, while Momo seems to find them more useful than Judaism and all but converts to Islam. It has echoes of Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist but is far more engagingly written, and Schmitt’s tale (the first in his four ‘Cycle of the Unseen’ books) has also been turned into a film which would be worth seeking out. An easily-digestible story well-served by good, fluid writing.  PY

MORE ON ÉRIC-EMMANUEL SCHMITT : AUTHOR'S WEBSITE  |  WIKIPEDIA

Rigoberta Menchú & Dante Liano, The Girl from Chimel, 2000

Rigoberta Menchú won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work on the human rights of indigenous peoples, and here she combines her family history with an illumination of ancient Mayan fables. These short tales have a gentle simplicity as seen through childhood eyes, capturing the innocence of her rural life before Guatemala descended into its 36-year civil war. A brief but refreshingly positive read.   PY