8 French-to-English parallel text books you should read

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One of the best ways to get better at reading French is - you guessed it - to read! French literature provides a treasure trove of resources to help you improve your reading comprehension skills, all while enjoying some of the finest written works ever produced.

But reading long tracts of French text can feel overwhelming. French novels are often long - especially some of the classics - and it can feel like you’re not making much progress if it takes you ten minutes to wade through a single page.
Fortunately, it’s easy nowadays to get your hands on parallel texts, or bilingual texts as they are sometimes known, for many French classics. These are books which display the French text on one page and the English translation on the other.

The advantage of these books is that you don’t need to look up every word you don’t understand in a dictionary, or resort to a reference guide to understand every grammatical conundrum you come across. All you need to do is cast your eyes to the opposite page to help with any difficulties you encounter while reading the French.

In a sense, you’re getting two books in one; and if you like, you can read the English translation first to help familiarise yourself with the story, which will come in handy when it comes to reading through the French.

Below we’ve compiled some of the parallel texts you can find with text in both French and English.

Le Petit Prince tells the story of a young boy - the titular prince - on his travels across a number of planets, where he encounters some curious characters and learns about love, loneliness and friendship. It’s one of the best-selling books of all time, and being a short children’s book, it’s also an accessible read for anyone looking to dip their toes into French literature.

Originally released as a serialised novel in 1857, Flaubert’s masterpiece explores the escapades and illicit activities of Emma Bovary, a hedonistic social climber whose approach to life is influenced by reading too many sentimental novels. (Don’t worry; you won’t find any on this list…)

Want to read Flaubert but fancy something a little shorter than Madame Bovary? Trois Contes comprises three short stories - Un cœur simple (A Simple Heart), La Légende de saint Julien l'Hospitalier (The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller) and Hérodias - and clocks in at just over 200 pages. A great place to start!

Unjustly imprisoned, Edmond Dantès escapes and reinvents himself as the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo to seek vengeance on those who betrayed him. Le Comte de Monte-Cristo is a sweeping tale of revenge, justice and redemption that spans continents and decades, continuing to hook readers to this day.

It’s also very long - especially if you’re reading the bilingual edition! In fact, this edition splits the novel into three parts. There’s no shame in taking your time with this one.

L'Étranger, translated as 'The Stranger' or 'The Outsider', opens with the famous line: ‘Aujourd hui maman est morte’ (‘Mother died today’). What follows is the (short) tale of a man in the grip of an existential crisis after he commits murder in 1940s Algeria.

Like Verne’s Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea), Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours is exactly what it says on the tin - a story about one man’s attempt (or two, if we included his valet) to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days, with all the exotic adventures you might expect from a fin de siecle literary classic.

Voltaire wrote over 2,000 books and pamphlets - yes, 2,000! - but by far his most famous is Candide, a fast-paced adventure story about a young man’s journey across the world. The narrative isn’t dissimilar from Verne’s Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours, but Voltaire’s novella is more of a commentary on religion and the follies of contemporary philosophers. It was written in the 18th century, so the French language may seem more archaic than some of the other books on this list.

Young and ambitious D’Artagnan joins forces with the gallant Athos, Porthos, and Aramis in 17th-century France. Les Trois Mousquetaires is one of the great classics of French adventure fiction, and like The Count of Monte Cristo, it’s not particularly short. This edition comes in two volumes.