Thanks, Kai. Look forward to reading your piece on ArtsFuse.

I read Kushner's The Flamethrowers and found much more to admire in it than in James. Would love to read your, "What's Eating the Prix Goncourt?" (or the Femina or any other French prize)!

John Updike said in one of his New Yorker book reviews (maybe a couple of decades ago) that French fiction doesn't travel well. That may be part of the issue with the Goncourt (and if so, is any decline worse than what's been going on all along)?

I like Annie Ernaux, but she's cagey about whether her work is fiction or nonfiction. I once asked one of her publicists point blank when her man-and-woman stories came out: Is this fiction or nonfiction? The publicist said, "She doesn't like to say."