A Very French Christmas : The Greatest French Holiday Stories of All Time

Guy de Maupassant (1850–1893) was a popular nineteenth-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form’s finest exponents. A protégé of Flaubert, his stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless dénouement. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He authored some three hundred short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse.

Alphonse Daudet (1840–1897) was a French novelist and the father of writers Léon Daudet and Lucien Daudet. He is regarded as one of the most iconic names in French literature.

Anatole France (1844–1924), the nom de plume of Anatole-Francois Thibault, began his literary career working for a publisher and writing weekly articles for the Univers Illustré. His first book of poems, Les poèms dorés, was published in 1875, and his first successful novel, Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard, appeared in 1881 and won a prize from the French Academy. The most prominent French man of letters of his time, he was elected to the French Academy in 1896, and received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921 for “the most remarkable literary work of idealistic stamp.”

Jean Brassard is a theater and television actor, singer, voice-over talent, audiobook narrator, and writer. He is the winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award.