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Originally Posted by Tarana
Both my former BIL and my college buddy's wife say the same thing. Neither have found more than a half dozen keeper novels from their native country. Could be the French just don't know how to write mysteries, thrillers or sci fi.
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I don't read much science fiction, but even i know that Jules Verne was one of the early pioneers of the genre. After that there's Pierre Boulle's <i>la Plančte des singes</i>, which you may know from the Hollywood adaptations.
Rather than faulting writers for neglecting to write detective fiction & thrillers, i'd say that in the francophone world, BD (comics) occupy a lot of the space that genre fiction does in the anglosphere. (Some of this work has even influenced the english speaking world. Think Barbarella & Moebius.)
Judging from the greater number of translations available in French bookstores, i think francophone readers and/or publishers may be more open to literature in translation. For example, many if not all of Japanese novelist Nakagami Kenji's works have been translated into French. Nakagami was well-regarded, but wrote -- gasp! -- literary fiction about difficult, touchy topics like discrimination. He's the kind of writer you'd expect to see translated into a larger market rather than a smaller one. Only it doesn't work out that way these days. English readers have to learn Japanese or make do with the handful of short stories that have been translated into English. At any rate, the point of all this is to say that it's possible the lack of interest in French writers is more a product of anglophone insularity than the shortcomings of French writers.